It's amazing the range and quality of parts in a dead office copier. Same goes for heavy duty printers and even scanners. Belt drives, couplings, pillow blocks, and on and on and on. But watch out for the obvious. If you think disassembling a car was messy, wait until you're getting smeared with three kinds of lubricant and toner is getting into every nook and cranny of your body. Man, that stuff makes sand seem unintrusive. Keep a dozen rolls of paper towels on hand. Seriously.
Consider me yet another rabid advocate of American Science & Surplus. I've been a big fan of theirs since they were called JerryCo back in the eighties. I, too say, if you can possibly get to the stores, then do. Also, don't be afraid to call if you don't see what you need. They may only have four of something and not have bothered to do a listing for it.
I don't know the words to say how kickass these guys are. Back in my prototyping days I moved to Milwaukee partially just to be able to get to their stores. They really are amazing.
Yeah, it looks nice and all but what it really looks like to me is a badly done imitation of Inarra's shuttle. But what can we expect? We have to assume that, on top of everything else, he doesn't offer the same kind or level of services;->
I know that this will disgust most folks here but afaic, the best market for these will be for receptionists and folks like that at high end customer service applications. If you're looking to build a reception desk for a boutique hotel then three or four of these in an open frame aluminum enclosure puts you well on your way to looking cool and rich for your snotty customers. In an application like that they don't even have to work very well. Back in the early nineties a company sold insanely expensive custom paint jobs for tower Macintosh CPUs and monitors and my friends and I all looked at them at the trade shows, drooled, and told each other that nobody would buy them. We were wrong. To a SoHo art gallery a thousand dollar cpu paintjob was cheap at the price and I can tell you that I kept spotting those puppies, some of them not even turned on, at various front desks at ad agencies, snotty law firms, and the like for at least seven or eight years after that.
Mark my words, these will be bought for high-profile uses at these kinds of places and almost certainly will get featured in at least one televison show or movie, probably several. All they need to do is a seed a few at Rodeo Drive stores or the offices of some casting agency and they'll be in like Flynn.
I'm talking about a donation. Nothing more or less. Simply a chance to say, "damn, you guys are doing cool stuff. Let me kick in a couple of bucks to help keep you going long enough to become viable."
How many products have you liked and/or used and seen go to hell or never get to market at all because of financial problems? My list is certainly longer than I might wish. Howsabout we leverage the vast numbers and financial clout of/. to change the equation?
On top of everything else, such a system would help quantize demand and thereby help worthy companies raise money more conventionally.
"So, why should we fund your venture?" "When we were mentioned on Slashdot, over three hundred users sent us contributions."
And it would also help call bullshit early on those ventures that should fail.
"So, you say that there will be massive demand for your product. Why is that when getting on Slashdot's front page netted you a pathetic fifteen dollars from just the kinds of users you say you're targeting?"
"Uhhhhhh..."
And, frankly, it would give/. as an organization and us as its users more power, a greater say in what does and does not go forward in the fields this site addresses. I don't know about y'all but I'm generally pretty in favor of chances to do something I want to do anyway and then get more influence by doing it.
Yeah, the intent *is* to make a business. What's your point? Do you have any idea how many startups get helped out in one way or another by folks not expecting to buy the product or become stockholders? Whether it's the retail outlet that gets cut a more payable price because the landlord likes their concept or the software company that gets shipped a free SDK because the vendor would like to see their software on his or her platform, it's entirely normal for people to offer a company a helping hand simply to help strengthen the ecosystem their products sell into or simply because they feel like it.
Frankly, after all these years, I'm getting a bit tired of the fantasyland that so many/.ers seem to live in of "pure" capitalist successes and the omnicient and infallable Force Of The Market. Those of us who actually work in startups know better. I wish that you guys would go out and read Accidental Empires or The Eudaemonic Pie or any of the other many books on how companies actually get started and grow. It's messy, it's difficult, and it's rarely doable without plenty of assists from plenty of people. All that I'm suggesting is that we take a thing that's already normal and add/. to the equation in a more straightforward and effective way.
Not that I consider myself a likely customer but it seems to me that this is the kind of research and development into low cost aircraft that will likely improve the pool of technologies and techniques available to all of us.
I think that we see a lot of stories on/. about tech projects that we are in favor of but where we're not going to buy the product and few or none of us are in a position to become investors. Maybe it would be a good idea for/. to have an opt-in feature of a Donate To This Project Here button for such stories. Again, it would only be visible to those of us who requested it in our prefs. But I think that there are an awful lot of projects where if we/.ers had the chance to easily contribute a few bucks when we saw a story about a project we liked, it would add up to serious money fast. I would opt in. In fact, if required, this might even get me to buy a membership here if doing so kicked into a pool of money that would pay for the additional work the selector of the story would have to carry out to execute such a step.
If I had mod points I would give some to you. Thanks for far and away the most informative and possibly most insightful post in the whole thread.
All of that having been said, I'm curious, are you familiar with the Twike and what do you think of it? Any thoughts on the Aptera or the various Zap vehicles?
So, where did you get your data for that conclusion? Old essays by William F. Buckley and George Bush, Sr.?
Speaking as somebody who *has* tried to line up funding and as a former workflow and operations consultant to startups, you're talking out your ass, especially in the current market. I've seen dozens of companies awash with money who had no working product nor credible plan to make one, an executive team who couldn't even spell the names of any of the engineering societies, and very expensive offices filled with a mix of suckers who had thought they were getting into something credible, short-term players like me making a quick buck and getting back out, and dozens of pretty, smiley ex-frat boys and sorority sisters who were happily burning through OPM, Other People's Money, as fast as the development people could get it, which was sometimes pretty damn fast.
I've also watched one cash-starved company after another struggle year in and year out despite excellent products, honest, talented executive teams, and customers who were eager to buy more if the capital could just be found to let the production ramp up.
Less than a month ago I watched a promising bike company self-destruct. I'm currently watching the place where I rent my space, an 26,000 square foot tech center run by a hard working, insightful team with plenty of tenants who want to stay, go down in flames due largely to lack of cash. I watched a multinational run by brilliant people doing amazing work AND that was meeting its earning targets and other milestones get left to fall into Chapter 7 bankruptcy because the VCs who had promised third round funding backed out when, to be honest, the fads shifted and they lost interest in the company's kind of business.
I don't know what libertarian/corporatist fantasy you're living in but out here among those of us who live and breathe real entrepreneurship, your Horatio Alger chuckleheadedness isn't just contemptible, it hurts to even read.
I love Cuil. No doubt. As a concept. But as I pointed out, there's a vast chasm between "a search engine" and one that can compete with Google. I mean, really, the "it sucked" in your comment says all that needs to be said. How many people are leaving Google to use Cuil? Personally, I *do* use Cuil. But I don't exactly see it making waves. Also, I am curious. Your comment got me to finally do a bit of checking. How much capital does Cuil have exactly? Judging from their staff, they look like quite the bunch of heavyweights themselves. Five million? I wonder.
Also, have you checked the recent news about them? I think that this piece kinda makes my case for me.
After all, I've never yet heard of a diesel vehicle that couldn't be converted, from thirties farm tractors to school buses to VW Golfs. And, yes, biodiesel can be made from all sorts of stuff. not just waste but even harvested by the ton from algae. And since it's got a much higher energy density that, say, hydrogen or natural gas, a smaller fuel tank can take you farther and cheaper.
But as for "the USA", if you mean the federal government, I'm not exactly impressed with any branch's performance so far.
If you're talking about the citizenry, they're mostly too busy watching reality TV and hoping for another "wardrobe malfunction" to do much of anything so far, though four dollar gas prices have sure gotten more people off their asses.
Municipalities have been doing an excellent job already of converting their fleet vehicles but mostly haven't gone much beyond that and in many cases are required to buy virgin source fuel from the campaign contributors with the most local pull.
Out here in Oregon, we're busy as hell, from building processing plants to gas stations to inventing new manufacturing technologies. But we're not exactly typical.
Me? I've never owned a car yet. I'm looking to buy one next year but it will probably be something like a Zap but with better batteries and a customized, low-weight freight area.
That's odd. I'm a pretty easy guy to reach, there being a grand total of two guys with my name in the entire country and all. Fwiw, I'm reachable as publisher as the email name, at the domain of my main site, streetcarpress.com. That having been said, I got involved first in logistics help for a family where the husband was dying and his stuff had to be cataloged, sorted, and dispersed. Since he was dying, his family was already arguing about who got how much and what. "His stuff" turned out to include over a dozen (literally) file cabinets and approximately 300 sq feet by an average of five feet tall pile of boxes full of mixed bike parts, radiation monitoring components, and papers, including everything from personal letters to unwashed laundry, and uncashed checks and unregistered stock certificates. (The certificates eventually added up to about a third of a million dollars. I get the impression from the lawyers that about half of that was either underdocumented in the records they had or simply not recorded anywhere.) My friends knew that I was sick of corporate IT, but was hurting for money and they knew that I always ended up coordinating things whenever a friend was moving or when something otherwise needed logistics or other organizational help. They also knew that I A.) was trustworthy, B.) could sort out machine tools and financial statements, and lab equipment, and hundreds of videos and movies and furniture to be donated, and on and on, and C.) was able and willing to give the appropriate class and demographic "recognition codes" to make the family feel that I would (and did) understand their concerns.
So two different people I knew socially recommended me. Every job after that came the same way. I never needed a resume. It was all word of mouth. Mostly I ended up working for people in an assisted living place called The Hallmark a few blocks from the WTC site. I got hired to help one couple there about a month after 9/11 with sorting out an apartment in the still somewhat secured area. Then the same family hired me to help them at their place, and so on.
As for charging, I started out pretty damn stupid. At first I did it for free, since I was helping friends of friends. Then I only charged expenses, then idjit stuff like expenses plus fifteen an hour or whatever. The only excuse for this is that I was dead broke and was using the shut down apartment I was working in (the former resident was too sick to be there) as a base of operations to get my work done. As I pointed out above, work like this means spending almost all of your onsite time in decidedly fancy places. If they can afford somebody like this, then they'll have unlimited calling on the phones, not care how long you run the air conditioner, and in cases like this, have cool tech stuff that most people wouldn't be able to even identify that I was quite glad to take as barter. So at a time that I was dead broke I was willing to charge very little to maintain the freedom to come and go any time I wanted (sorta) and to have an air-conditioned, quiet place to make my phone calls, do my reading, etc. Over time, as the time commitment got bigger and my finances got tighter, I started pulling out my old consulting timesheet templates and billing them as I would somebody I was doing computer work for.
Fwiw, I always insisted on flexible hours and the right to pick and choose what I did. I usually was given keys to places where I would be doing a lot of work and as long as I stayed very presentable (usual IT guy khakis but a bit more high end, with understated but expensive shirts, bag, and accessories) and made myself useful, I could work pretty much as much and when I chose. Obviously it helped to have as many as five clients in the same building at a given time. BUT to keep this flexibility, I always undercharged my competitors and always cut some slack on what expenses I billed. Since I was competing largely with lawyers and other overpriced pondscum, this wasn't all that hard. I als
Yeah. The minimum price is pretty steep, though that is for about half a mile of tape. Truth is, I've never actually bought any. Just acquired it at the end of various projects. After all, the twenty to fifty foot pieces that get chopped off and thrown out as useless for pulling cable are more than enough for my needs. And man, it's soft, doesn't stretch unduly, it's ungodly strong, holds knots like a dream, can be packed in a tiny space in, say, a messenger bag, and much of it is a wonderfully unsettling bright yellow.
All of which makes it so very valuable for, well, all sorts of things.
Ya know what? Occasionally reality involves the things that the scam artists imitate. That's why they imitate them. Kinda like any other cliche; they became cliches because previously a hell of a lot of people has found themselves saying those things with no ironic intent.
On a less conceptual note, go for it, do the research and see if I'm blowing smoke. Try, say, searching on the phrase "eldercare consulting". There's a hell of a lot of businesses out there and a hell of a lot of corporate idjits who think that very personal problems can be solved with standardized, templated solutions. You know, just like computer consulting.
And fwiw, if you actually read my post you'll discover that what I'm suggesting is anything but a free lunch. TANSTAAFL is fully in effect. To do what I did is impossible without at least six or seven kinds of expertise and no small amount of focused, skilled work.
So if you're just yet another superficial/.er going for a quick snipe, bugger off. If you really think that you're saying something useful or insightful, bugger off with a big ol' cyanide-covered cherry on top.
I'm not sure that I'm kidding about that. I've seen quite a few people, including some volunteers of suitable ages, suggest that we send older people to places like Mars with the explicit intent of it being a one-way trip. That being the case, if we're talking about the ever more popular approach of starting by sending robots to dig tunnels to live in and accumulate fuels and oxygen and such, it may turn out that one of the biggest contributions those Mars travelers provide is their bodies. When they die, if they agree to have their bodies ground up and added to the garden area, they'll add not only almost two hundred pounds of prime, high-nutrient biomatter, but also a complete set of the tens of thousands of microorganisms that we carry around with us, many of which we count on to get through the day.
Of course, we could just start shipping them dozens of dead bodies of healthy people on high-g trajectories as soon as we've got the greenhouses up and running but I just can't see that getting approved. Maybe if it's offered as a multi-million dollar burial option, the dead people's estates can be gotten to pay for it;->
For a few years I made my living doing a very geeky sort of eldercare. There are an awful lot of people, mostly women over the age of seventy-five, who need a hell of a lot of skilled help that a broadly skilled geek can provide. They are usually still managing three or four bank accounts, two to ten investment accounts, about twenty to fifty annual contributions, and various other expenses. And usually dealing with one or more personal aides, who almost never speak good English and even if they do, do a lot better with somebody young, firm, and capable who keeps them on target. And they are usually slowing dispersing their possessions, which frequently involves psychologically complex claims of interest in donating things but with dozens of conditions, most of which they can't even articulate. And all with families who want all of this dealt with but aren't going to make the time to be there enough to do this and would be hobbled by family dynamics if they even tried.
Once you learn to see it that way, almost all of it is systems problems. Things that can be hacked.
Add all of this up, and, especially when you added in the families who were in the process of moving from standalone homes to senior residences, I had far more work than I was willing to take on. And since I underpriced the market by charging thirty to fifty dollars an hour, I really got to pick and choose. Flexibility mattered far more to me than the marginal income. Just think of it as consulting work. The kind where the ability to keep a good timesheet is crucial, as is the ability to bill regularly, and then get the client to pay, which, when it goes wrong, is usually just another problem you can, ironically, bill to fix.
The trick to all of this? Being capable enough that whether the problem is about bookkeeping or logistics or finding and managing a contractor, your answer can be "don't worry; I'll take care of it." If you can make that promise and keep it, you're golden. You'll probably, like me, end up needing to find one or more assistants to help out if you're not willing to commit to doing this full time. I tried to keep it all at about fifteen hours a week and while peak load (say, moves of large houses or medical crises) was quite a bit higher, on average I did just fine. Fwiw, I peaked at five assistants on a couple of big jobs. Finding and managing them was, of course, much of what I was being paid for.
There are hundreds of thousands of affluent households who are just now moving from private homes into senior residences of one sort or another and the bottom line is that these residences are institutions. And from the food to the visual esthetics to the available services and schedules, these places are just not up to the job of satisfying these people who have had decades to get used to a higher standard. The person who can fill in that gap can write their own ticket.
What I'm describing is a boom industry and will be for years to come and it uses most of the skills I learned as an IT director and consultant. Financial management, crisis management, learning to live the "pager lifestyle", handling subcontractors, and so on. Things like explaining the limitations of servers to PHBs and routing installs around union b.s. apply, too. Not to mention being able to switch from being "a suit" talking to a lawyer (or a doctor, or both at once) to climbing under a desk to see if a new outlet was done properly. But since you're working for a family, you've got waaay more flexibility than you do at a corporate job. And if you're good the word of mouth will get you as many clients as you're willing to take on.
As for the "work from home" issue, like many kinds of consulting, for every hour you spend onsite, you spend half an hour to three hours offsite. Doing research, coordinating subcontractors, and so on. If you are online and can be on the phone for a while now and then, it doesn't matter if you're home, at work, or in the middle of a bro
I could argue this point by point but for once Wikipedia actually is pretty good. So I'll just quote them where they say: Woodward has been accused by a few critics of being too close to the Bush administration, and some say his relationship with the current administration is in stark contrast to his investigative role in Watergate.
But, as usual, they miss a lot of the story. As I've already mentioned, the most important spadework that he's done for the Reagan-Bush-Bush crowd is the way that he wrote and promoted Veil, which was a crucial tool in the effort to let the Reagan crew get away with Iran-Contra and a slew of other criminal underminings of our country. Ya see, Woodward gave the impression that damn near every unethical thing ever done under Reagan had been done by Casey without anybody else' knowledge or approval. Very convenient since Casey had just died and couldn't be ordered to testify. Well, in the years since it's become clear just how many other Reagan White House officials were involved in this though I'm pretty damn sure that we still don't have much of the picture. But Woodward bought them crucial time. And I suspect that this is why Bush gave him unprecedented access to the White House.
Think about it. With everything that we know about the Bush administration, does it really pass the smell test that Dubya would give Woodward such unique and comprehensive access to the administration if he genuinely were as dedicated an opponent of corruption as his press makes him seem?
I'm not just criticizing Woodward as a spur-of-the-moment impulse. I've been wary of that bastard for almost twenty years now. But evidently the rest a y'all either never knew or have forgotten.
Look up "the wikipedia" on what, exactly? You're being a bit vague. Gas? Electricity? Or should I just look for the entry on "bad stuff"? As for risk, are you somehow under the impression that gas lines and electrical lines are somehow safer when they can't be regularly inspected or maintained? Make no mistake, gas lines and electrical lines do fail, and they do so more frequently and at higher cost and risk when they are hard to reach and are more of a danger to the community when they're hard to repair. Do you think that it's safe to have to dig up streets where a gas main is broken open?
What seems "kinda stupid" to you is considered far safer by silly folks like electrical engineers, civil engineers, facilities managers, and building code regulators. But now that you've explained it to us all in such convincing detail I'm sure that they'll change their minds.
If, perhaps, you just haven't thought it through, as it happens, I've written a little overview on the subject. I wasn't planning to linking to it in this thread but in the face of your devastating and profound critique I thought that maybe you could use just a few more facts to help refine your admittedly already deeply wise understanding.
I've gone online and looked again and while he did a lot of questionable stuff, such as his attempts to discredit the investigation, he didn't go public with the information he was fed about Plame.
Google is now used like a bookmark or type ahead.
on
Stuck In Google's Doghouse
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· Score: 3, Insightful
No. It only suggests that there continue to be plenty of people doing a given search for the first time. It's a big ol' world out there and you can be pretty damn good at what you do and not have everybody on the entire web already know about you and where to find you. On top of everything else, I've found that many people no longer bother to remember exactly the name of a site. They just remember enough to be able to find it with Google over and over and over. I've seen it done by people going to my own site, with me standing right there. They say, "okay, what's your site again? Something about streetcars and space and..." while they type into the Google window that's a default part of their browser. Using Google has become like a remote operated kind of type ahead or like bookmarking in many people's habits so sometimes even if a site is liked and used frequently, if it's not high up in Google's results, as far as many people are concerned, it will be gone.
Thank you. I've been thinking the same things but wasn't willing to do as good a job as you have of documenting and articulating why this site A.) gives legitimate value and, B.) has a valid case of discrimination. Afaic, once Google had featured this guy and given him an award, they lost any legitimate grounds for claiming that his site somehow "wasn't appropriate", especially once the guy had blown half a million dollars doing what they made him guess was what they wanted. Would I be happier if his site has a bit more visual flair? Yes. But that doesn't detract from the fact that they are a better path to what his users want than not only Google but most of what they point to.
For Google to rank a business as "No.1" is no different from me saying that I hate Sears products.
Not true at all. When you decide, you do so mostly or entirely on your own behalf. Google's decisions affect hundreds of millions of people, not to mention that they present themselves as experts, in a new sort of way. And just as a civil engineer's opinion given to a client about cement makers is actionable while yours isn't, Google's "opinion" about a website is actionable. Ranking websites is what they do. They present themselves to the world as a content aggregator. That makes them fundamentally different from somebody deciding something about how they will spend their own money.
This is the opposite of "freedom". Realistically, they and a handful of other companies control the biggest pathways to a multi-trillion dollar market and you have to deal with them or one of a handful of others to get what has become a basic service. This is no more an example of "freedom" than choosing a broadband provider is. This is also not "equality". Anybody going up against them is facing a corporation with more wealth, expertise, market position, and overall power than all but a few dozen in the world. If, say, the government of Sweden were to go up against Google, chances are Sweden would get their ass kicked. Same goes for, say, MIT or, as we've already seen, Microsoft. Anybody who can repeatedly publicly humiliate Microsoft isn't "equal" to anybody anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
It's amazing the range and quality of parts in a dead office copier. Same goes for heavy duty printers and even scanners. Belt drives, couplings, pillow blocks, and on and on and on. But watch out for the obvious. If you think disassembling a car was messy, wait until you're getting smeared with three kinds of lubricant and toner is getting into every nook and cranny of your body. Man, that stuff makes sand seem unintrusive. Keep a dozen rolls of paper towels on hand. Seriously.
Consider me yet another rabid advocate of American Science & Surplus. I've been a big fan of theirs since they were called JerryCo back in the eighties. I, too say, if you can possibly get to the stores, then do. Also, don't be afraid to call if you don't see what you need. They may only have four of something and not have bothered to do a listing for it.
I don't know the words to say how kickass these guys are. Back in my prototyping days I moved to Milwaukee partially just to be able to get to their stores. They really are amazing.
Yeah, it looks nice and all but what it really looks like to me is a badly done imitation of Inarra's shuttle. But what can we expect? We have to assume that, on top of everything else, he doesn't offer the same kind or level of services ;->
I know that this will disgust most folks here but afaic, the best market for these will be for receptionists and folks like that at high end customer service applications. If you're looking to build a reception desk for a boutique hotel then three or four of these in an open frame aluminum enclosure puts you well on your way to looking cool and rich for your snotty customers. In an application like that they don't even have to work very well. Back in the early nineties a company sold insanely expensive custom paint jobs for tower Macintosh CPUs and monitors and my friends and I all looked at them at the trade shows, drooled, and told each other that nobody would buy them. We were wrong. To a SoHo art gallery a thousand dollar cpu paintjob was cheap at the price and I can tell you that I kept spotting those puppies, some of them not even turned on, at various front desks at ad agencies, snotty law firms, and the like for at least seven or eight years after that.
Mark my words, these will be bought for high-profile uses at these kinds of places and almost certainly will get featured in at least one televison show or movie, probably several. All they need to do is a seed a few at Rodeo Drive stores or the offices of some casting agency and they'll be in like Flynn.
I'm talking about a donation. Nothing more or less. Simply a chance to say, "damn, you guys are doing cool stuff. Let me kick in a couple of bucks to help keep you going long enough to become viable."
/. to change the equation?
/. as an organization and us as its users more power, a greater say in what does and does not go forward in the fields this site addresses. I don't know about y'all but I'm generally pretty in favor of chances to do something I want to do anyway and then get more influence by doing it.
How many products have you liked and/or used and seen go to hell or never get to market at all because of financial problems? My list is certainly longer than I might wish. Howsabout we leverage the vast numbers and financial clout of
On top of everything else, such a system would help quantize demand and thereby help worthy companies raise money more conventionally.
"So, why should we fund your venture?"
"When we were mentioned on Slashdot, over three hundred users sent us contributions."
And it would also help call bullshit early on those ventures that should fail.
"So, you say that there will be massive demand for your product. Why is that when getting on Slashdot's front page netted you a pathetic fifteen dollars from just the kinds of users you say you're targeting?"
"Uhhhhhh..."
And, frankly, it would give
Yeah, the intent *is* to make a business. What's your point? Do you have any idea how many startups get helped out in one way or another by folks not expecting to buy the product or become stockholders? Whether it's the retail outlet that gets cut a more payable price because the landlord likes their concept or the software company that gets shipped a free SDK because the vendor would like to see their software on his or her platform, it's entirely normal for people to offer a company a helping hand simply to help strengthen the ecosystem their products sell into or simply because they feel like it.
/.ers seem to live in of "pure" capitalist successes and the omnicient and infallable Force Of The Market. Those of us who actually work in startups know better. I wish that you guys would go out and read Accidental Empires or The Eudaemonic Pie or any of the other many books on how companies actually get started and grow. It's messy, it's difficult, and it's rarely doable without plenty of assists from plenty of people. All that I'm suggesting is that we take a thing that's already normal and add /. to the equation in a more straightforward and effective way.
Frankly, after all these years, I'm getting a bit tired of the fantasyland that so many
. . . in the second scene of the first Star Trek movie.
Not that I care.
Not that I consider myself a likely customer but it seems to me that this is the kind of research and development into low cost aircraft that will likely improve the pool of technologies and techniques available to all of us.
/. about tech projects that we are in favor of but where we're not going to buy the product and few or none of us are in a position to become investors. Maybe it would be a good idea for /. to have an opt-in feature of a Donate To This Project Here button for such stories. Again, it would only be visible to those of us who requested it in our prefs. But I think that there are an awful lot of projects where if we /.ers had the chance to easily contribute a few bucks when we saw a story about a project we liked, it would add up to serious money fast. I would opt in. In fact, if required, this might even get me to buy a membership here if doing so kicked into a pool of money that would pay for the additional work the selector of the story would have to carry out to execute such a step.
I think that we see a lot of stories on
If I had mod points I would give some to you. Thanks for far and away the most informative and possibly most insightful post in the whole thread.
All of that having been said, I'm curious, are you familiar with the Twike and what do you think of it? Any thoughts on the Aptera or the various Zap vehicles?
So, where did you get your data for that conclusion? Old essays by William F. Buckley and George Bush, Sr.?
Speaking as somebody who *has* tried to line up funding and as a former workflow and operations consultant to startups, you're talking out your ass, especially in the current market. I've seen dozens of companies awash with money who had no working product nor credible plan to make one, an executive team who couldn't even spell the names of any of the engineering societies, and very expensive offices filled with a mix of suckers who had thought they were getting into something credible, short-term players like me making a quick buck and getting back out, and dozens of pretty, smiley ex-frat boys and sorority sisters who were happily burning through OPM, Other People's Money, as fast as the development people could get it, which was sometimes pretty damn fast.
I've also watched one cash-starved company after another struggle year in and year out despite excellent products, honest, talented executive teams, and customers who were eager to buy more if the capital could just be found to let the production ramp up.
Less than a month ago I watched a promising bike company self-destruct. I'm currently watching the place where I rent my space, an 26,000 square foot tech center run by a hard working, insightful team with plenty of tenants who want to stay, go down in flames due largely to lack of cash. I watched a multinational run by brilliant people doing amazing work AND that was meeting its earning targets and other milestones get left to fall into Chapter 7 bankruptcy because the VCs who had promised third round funding backed out when, to be honest, the fads shifted and they lost interest in the company's kind of business.
I don't know what libertarian/corporatist fantasy you're living in but out here among those of us who live and breathe real entrepreneurship, your Horatio Alger chuckleheadedness isn't just contemptible, it hurts to even read.
I love Cuil. No doubt. As a concept. But as I pointed out, there's a vast chasm between "a search engine" and one that can compete with Google. I mean, really, the "it sucked" in your comment says all that needs to be said. How many people are leaving Google to use Cuil? Personally, I *do* use Cuil. But I don't exactly see it making waves. Also, I am curious. Your comment got me to finally do a bit of checking. How much capital does Cuil have exactly? Judging from their staff, they look like quite the bunch of heavyweights themselves. Five million? I wonder.
Also, have you checked the recent news about them? I think that this piece kinda makes my case for me.
After all, I've never yet heard of a diesel vehicle that couldn't be converted, from thirties farm tractors to school buses to VW Golfs. And, yes, biodiesel can be made from all sorts of stuff. not just waste but even harvested by the ton from algae. And since it's got a much higher energy density that, say, hydrogen or natural gas, a smaller fuel tank can take you farther and cheaper.
But as for "the USA", if you mean the federal government, I'm not exactly impressed with any branch's performance so far.
If you're talking about the citizenry, they're mostly too busy watching reality TV and hoping for another "wardrobe malfunction" to do much of anything so far, though four dollar gas prices have sure gotten more people off their asses.
Municipalities have been doing an excellent job already of converting their fleet vehicles but mostly haven't gone much beyond that and in many cases are required to buy virgin source fuel from the campaign contributors with the most local pull.
Out here in Oregon, we're busy as hell, from building processing plants to gas stations to inventing new manufacturing technologies. But we're not exactly typical.
Me? I've never owned a car yet. I'm looking to buy one next year but it will probably be something like a Zap but with better batteries and a customized, low-weight freight area.
That's odd. I'm a pretty easy guy to reach, there being a grand total of two guys with my name in the entire country and all. Fwiw, I'm reachable as publisher as the email name, at the domain of my main site, streetcarpress.com. That having been said, I got involved first in logistics help for a family where the husband was dying and his stuff had to be cataloged, sorted, and dispersed. Since he was dying, his family was already arguing about who got how much and what.
"His stuff" turned out to include over a dozen (literally) file cabinets and approximately 300 sq feet by an average of five feet tall pile of boxes full of mixed bike parts, radiation monitoring components, and papers, including everything from personal letters to unwashed laundry, and uncashed checks and unregistered stock certificates. (The certificates eventually added up to about a third of a million dollars. I get the impression from the lawyers that about half of that was either underdocumented in the records they had or simply not recorded anywhere.)
My friends knew that I was sick of corporate IT, but was hurting for money and they knew that I always ended up coordinating things whenever a friend was moving or when something otherwise needed logistics or other organizational help. They also knew that I A.) was trustworthy, B.) could sort out machine tools and financial statements, and lab equipment, and hundreds of videos and movies and furniture to be donated, and on and on, and C.) was able and willing to give the appropriate class and demographic "recognition codes" to make the family feel that I would (and did) understand their concerns.
So two different people I knew socially recommended me. Every job after that came the same way. I never needed a resume. It was all word of mouth. Mostly I ended up working for people in an assisted living place called The Hallmark a few blocks from the WTC site. I got hired to help one couple there about a month after 9/11 with sorting out an apartment in the still somewhat secured area. Then the same family hired me to help them at their place, and so on.
As for charging, I started out pretty damn stupid. At first I did it for free, since I was helping friends of friends. Then I only charged expenses, then idjit stuff like expenses plus fifteen an hour or whatever. The only excuse for this is that I was dead broke and was using the shut down apartment I was working in (the former resident was too sick to be there) as a base of operations to get my work done. As I pointed out above, work like this means spending almost all of your onsite time in decidedly fancy places. If they can afford somebody like this, then they'll have unlimited calling on the phones, not care how long you run the air conditioner, and in cases like this, have cool tech stuff that most people wouldn't be able to even identify that I was quite glad to take as barter. So at a time that I was dead broke I was willing to charge very little to maintain the freedom to come and go any time I wanted (sorta) and to have an air-conditioned, quiet place to make my phone calls, do my reading, etc. Over time, as the time commitment got bigger and my finances got tighter, I started pulling out my old consulting timesheet templates and billing them as I would somebody I was doing computer work for.
Fwiw, I always insisted on flexible hours and the right to pick and choose what I did. I usually was given keys to places where I would be doing a lot of work and as long as I stayed very presentable (usual IT guy khakis but a bit more high end, with understated but expensive shirts, bag, and accessories) and made myself useful, I could work pretty much as much and when I chose. Obviously it helped to have as many as five clients in the same building at a given time. BUT to keep this flexibility, I always undercharged my competitors and always cut some slack on what expenses I billed. Since I was competing largely with lawyers and other overpriced pondscum, this wasn't all that hard. I als
Yeah. The minimum price is pretty steep, though that is for about half a mile of tape. Truth is, I've never actually bought any. Just acquired it at the end of various projects. After all, the twenty to fifty foot pieces that get chopped off and thrown out as useless for pulling cable are more than enough for my needs. And man, it's soft, doesn't stretch unduly, it's ungodly strong, holds knots like a dream, can be packed in a tiny space in, say, a messenger bag, and much of it is a wonderfully unsettling bright yellow.
All of which makes it so very valuable for, well, all sorts of things.
Dude, dude! You've got it all wrong. If you're going for light bondage, use cable pulling tape. Muuuuch better ;->
Not that I'ld know or anything.
Heh.
Ya know what? Occasionally reality involves the things that the scam artists imitate. That's why they imitate them. Kinda like any other cliche; they became cliches because previously a hell of a lot of people has found themselves saying those things with no ironic intent.
/.er going for a quick snipe, bugger off. If you really think that you're saying something useful or insightful, bugger off with a big ol' cyanide-covered cherry on top.
On a less conceptual note, go for it, do the research and see if I'm blowing smoke. Try, say, searching on the phrase "eldercare consulting". There's a hell of a lot of businesses out there and a hell of a lot of corporate idjits who think that very personal problems can be solved with standardized, templated solutions. You know, just like computer consulting.
And fwiw, if you actually read my post you'll discover that what I'm suggesting is anything but a free lunch. TANSTAAFL is fully in effect. To do what I did is impossible without at least six or seven kinds of expertise and no small amount of focused, skilled work.
So if you're just yet another superficial
I'm not sure that I'm kidding about that. I've seen quite a few people, including some volunteers of suitable ages, suggest that we send older people to places like Mars with the explicit intent of it being a one-way trip. That being the case, if we're talking about the ever more popular approach of starting by sending robots to dig tunnels to live in and accumulate fuels and oxygen and such, it may turn out that one of the biggest contributions those Mars travelers provide is their bodies. When they die, if they agree to have their bodies ground up and added to the garden area, they'll add not only almost two hundred pounds of prime, high-nutrient biomatter, but also a complete set of the tens of thousands of microorganisms that we carry around with us, many of which we count on to get through the day.
;->
Of course, we could just start shipping them dozens of dead bodies of healthy people on high-g trajectories as soon as we've got the greenhouses up and running but I just can't see that getting approved. Maybe if it's offered as a multi-million dollar burial option, the dead people's estates can be gotten to pay for it
I think that you're thinking of the twenty-third century.
For a few years I made my living doing a very geeky sort of eldercare. There are an awful lot of people, mostly women over the age of seventy-five, who need a hell of a lot of skilled help that a broadly skilled geek can provide. They are usually still managing three or four bank accounts, two to ten investment accounts, about twenty to fifty annual contributions, and various other expenses. And usually dealing with one or more personal aides, who almost never speak good English and even if they do, do a lot better with somebody young, firm, and capable who keeps them on target. And they are usually slowing dispersing their possessions, which frequently involves psychologically complex claims of interest in donating things but with dozens of conditions, most of which they can't even articulate. And all with families who want all of this dealt with but aren't going to make the time to be there enough to do this and would be hobbled by family dynamics if they even tried.
Once you learn to see it that way, almost all of it is systems problems. Things that can be hacked.
Add all of this up, and, especially when you added in the families who were in the process of moving from standalone homes to senior residences, I had far more work than I was willing to take on. And since I underpriced the market by charging thirty to fifty dollars an hour, I really got to pick and choose. Flexibility mattered far more to me than the marginal income. Just think of it as consulting work. The kind where the ability to keep a good timesheet is crucial, as is the ability to bill regularly, and then get the client to pay, which, when it goes wrong, is usually just another problem you can, ironically, bill to fix.
The trick to all of this? Being capable enough that whether the problem is about bookkeeping or logistics or finding and managing a contractor, your answer can be "don't worry; I'll take care of it." If you can make that promise and keep it, you're golden. You'll probably, like me, end up needing to find one or more assistants to help out if you're not willing to commit to doing this full time. I tried to keep it all at about fifteen hours a week and while peak load (say, moves of large houses or medical crises) was quite a bit higher, on average I did just fine. Fwiw, I peaked at five assistants on a couple of big jobs. Finding and managing them was, of course, much of what I was being paid for.
There are hundreds of thousands of affluent households who are just now moving from private homes into senior residences of one sort or another and the bottom line is that these residences are institutions. And from the food to the visual esthetics to the available services and schedules, these places are just not up to the job of satisfying these people who have had decades to get used to a higher standard. The person who can fill in that gap can write their own ticket.
What I'm describing is a boom industry and will be for years to come and it uses most of the skills I learned as an IT director and consultant. Financial management, crisis management, learning to live the "pager lifestyle", handling subcontractors, and so on. Things like explaining the limitations of servers to PHBs and routing installs around union b.s. apply, too. Not to mention being able to switch from being "a suit" talking to a lawyer (or a doctor, or both at once) to climbing under a desk to see if a new outlet was done properly. But since you're working for a family, you've got waaay more flexibility than you do at a corporate job. And if you're good the word of mouth will get you as many clients as you're willing to take on.
As for the "work from home" issue, like many kinds of consulting, for every hour you spend onsite, you spend half an hour to three hours offsite. Doing research, coordinating subcontractors, and so on. If you are online and can be on the phone for a while now and then, it doesn't matter if you're home, at work, or in the middle of a bro
I could argue this point by point but for once Wikipedia actually is pretty good. So I'll just quote them where they say:
Woodward has been accused by a few critics of being too close to the Bush administration, and some say his relationship with the current administration is in stark contrast to his investigative role in Watergate.
But, as usual, they miss a lot of the story. As I've already mentioned, the most important spadework that he's done for the Reagan-Bush-Bush crowd is the way that he wrote and promoted Veil, which was a crucial tool in the effort to let the Reagan crew get away with Iran-Contra and a slew of other criminal underminings of our country. Ya see, Woodward gave the impression that damn near every unethical thing ever done under Reagan had been done by Casey without anybody else' knowledge or approval. Very convenient since Casey had just died and couldn't be ordered to testify. Well, in the years since it's become clear just how many other Reagan White House officials were involved in this though I'm pretty damn sure that we still don't have much of the picture. But Woodward bought them crucial time. And I suspect that this is why Bush gave him unprecedented access to the White House.
Think about it. With everything that we know about the Bush administration, does it really pass the smell test that Dubya would give Woodward such unique and comprehensive access to the administration if he genuinely were as dedicated an opponent of corruption as his press makes him seem?
I'm not just criticizing Woodward as a spur-of-the-moment impulse. I've been wary of that bastard for almost twenty years now. But evidently the rest a y'all either never knew or have forgotten.
Look up "the wikipedia" on what, exactly? You're being a bit vague. Gas? Electricity? Or should I just look for the entry on "bad stuff"? As for risk, are you somehow under the impression that gas lines and electrical lines are somehow safer when they can't be regularly inspected or maintained? Make no mistake, gas lines and electrical lines do fail, and they do so more frequently and at higher cost and risk when they are hard to reach and are more of a danger to the community when they're hard to repair. Do you think that it's safe to have to dig up streets where a gas main is broken open?
What seems "kinda stupid" to you is considered far safer by silly folks like electrical engineers, civil engineers, facilities managers, and building code regulators. But now that you've explained it to us all in such convincing detail I'm sure that they'll change their minds.
If, perhaps, you just haven't thought it through, as it happens, I've written a little overview on the subject. I wasn't planning to linking to it in this thread but in the face of your devastating and profound critique I thought that maybe you could use just a few more facts to help refine your admittedly already deeply wise understanding.
I've gone online and looked again and while he did a lot of questionable stuff, such as his attempts to discredit the investigation, he didn't go public with the information he was fed about Plame.
No. It only suggests that there continue to be plenty of people doing a given search for the first time. It's a big ol' world out there and you can be pretty damn good at what you do and not have everybody on the entire web already know about you and where to find you. On top of everything else, I've found that many people no longer bother to remember exactly the name of a site. They just remember enough to be able to find it with Google over and over and over. I've seen it done by people going to my own site, with me standing right there. They say, "okay, what's your site again? Something about streetcars and space and..." while they type into the Google window that's a default part of their browser. Using Google has become like a remote operated kind of type ahead or like bookmarking in many people's habits so sometimes even if a site is liked and used frequently, if it's not high up in Google's results, as far as many people are concerned, it will be gone.
Thank you. I've been thinking the same things but wasn't willing to do as good a job as you have of documenting and articulating why this site A.) gives legitimate value and, B.) has a valid case of discrimination. Afaic, once Google had featured this guy and given him an award, they lost any legitimate grounds for claiming that his site somehow "wasn't appropriate", especially once the guy had blown half a million dollars doing what they made him guess was what they wanted.
Would I be happier if his site has a bit more visual flair? Yes. But that doesn't detract from the fact that they are a better path to what his users want than not only Google but most of what they point to.
For Google to rank a business as "No.1" is no different from me saying that I hate Sears products.
Not true at all. When you decide, you do so mostly or entirely on your own behalf. Google's decisions affect hundreds of millions of people, not to mention that they present themselves as experts, in a new sort of way. And just as a civil engineer's opinion given to a client about cement makers is actionable while yours isn't, Google's "opinion" about a website is actionable. Ranking websites is what they do. They present themselves to the world as a content aggregator. That makes them fundamentally different from somebody deciding something about how they will spend their own money.
This is the opposite of "freedom". Realistically, they and a handful of other companies control the biggest pathways to a multi-trillion dollar market and you have to deal with them or one of a handful of others to get what has become a basic service. This is no more an example of "freedom" than choosing a broadband provider is.
This is also not "equality". Anybody going up against them is facing a corporation with more wealth, expertise, market position, and overall power than all but a few dozen in the world. If, say, the government of Sweden were to go up against Google, chances are Sweden would get their ass kicked. Same goes for, say, MIT or, as we've already seen, Microsoft. Anybody who can repeatedly publicly humiliate Microsoft isn't "equal" to anybody anymore.