One of my good buddies has been working on this for a while. Continuous build, test, deploy infrastructure in the cloud - pretty cool stuff, and its a pain to do it right in house, so a good candidate for outsourcing. Disclaimer - I dont work for these guys, nor have I actually used their services. Yet.;-)
Fortunately the only thing that matters in a hiring decision for me is demonstrable competence. You could be a cruelly mutated sea snail, and if you demonstrate the ability to solve hard problems, have a healthy sense of curiosity (and ideally a sense of humor), and seem likely to be able to work well with others, thats all that matters. The metric above is mostly for entertainment, but I *dare* you to plot some of your business associates. For maximal entertainment, pick folks on the financial side... VCs tend to work better than most in my experience, but YMMV.;-)
I have a similar metric built after years in business, tech, VC, etc. Its quite simple, totally not politically correct, and very tongue in cheek. But for your entertainment:
Dimensions for analysis:
x-axis factors: 1) Height short -> tall 2) "WASPiness" waspy -> non-waspy 3) Sex "female" -> "male" 4) attractiveness troll -> model x-axis, (0-N)=1+2+3+4 y-axis factor: 5) Odds of Incompetence likely useless -> potential illuminati y-axis, (0-N)=5
So it turns out the further away from the origin (0) you get on the x axis, the closer to the origin (0) you get on the y axis. That is, the taller, waspier, more 'male', and more attractive you are the higher are the odds that you are incompetent in every sense of the word. So if you ever meet a short, non-waspy, non-male, unattractive person in a position of power, be very, very careful. They are probably extremely competent.;-)
This model is clearly US centric, btw, I suspect it wouldn't hold up very well internationally....
I dunno about that, I am stuck working with Windows mostly because of SolidWorks and Autocad. Find me a reasonably comparable open source alternative, or even something I can buy for linux and I could drop Windows like a hot potato. And no, Blender just doesn't cut it yet...;-)
But for coding, number crunching, analysis, or anything else linux comes up trumps. And I still cannot believe folks actually use Eclipse for anything serious. heh.
Is it wrong that my first response to this post was 'i bet you could make a cell phone jammer detection app'? The idea of the cell phone arms race spiraling out of control intrigues me.;-)
Absolutely. Which is why this visualization is not useful. Now if they mapped the intersection of population density and cell coverage, that would be interesting.;-)
You bring up a key point. Despite how 'mainstream' the geek has become, if my buddies and i get fired up about something *actually technical or science related* when we are out and about with the gadfly crowd the coolness meter goes down real quick. Doesnt matter how 'cool' people think the geekery is, the evidence still suggests actually being passionate about science and technology isnt going to be your shortcut to the in crowd. Probably never will be, but *that* would be a change i could get excited about.;-)
BTW, in my experience going with any onboard sound card is not the best way to go these days. I used to use lots of different high end sound cards, but now that new high end DACs (digital analog converter) actually have USB input, the best way to get sound out of a computer/digital device is the same way you get it off a high end turntable or CD transport - go from source to DAC, then convert it. The device drivers that allow you to treat an attached USB device as a digital audio device are very good, available for all platforms, and quite simple.
So forget the sound card completely (and definitely dont use the onboard sound), go with a DAC that has USB and you will be amazed. Can also pick and choose a DAC that suits your requirements and pricepoint without messing about with your system config... Like i said, this is a huge deal for folks who like to use computer based audio sources. Least it has been for me...
Really? A fictional guy when there are so many more unbelievable real folks to choose from? Maybe Leonardo da Vinci? I mean, he was so cool he had a cartoon superhero named after *him*. Ok, so it was a mutant turtle, but still...;-)
Or at least some sort of microkernel based virtualization... forget about antivirus, firewalls, and all that noise. Just give me a fire and forget OS that is refreshed anew with each power cycle. My cell phone is *supposed* to be an appliance, after all. Keep the data on the network, and refresh the OS from a known good copy every time i turn it on...
Who am i kidding, there is too much money in OS vulnerabilities for this to ever fly...;-)
Only one thing, really. Contracts and other signed documents. As far as i know there is no way to electronically sign formal contracts in a generally accepted fashion. If that capability was available i would never use faxes/scanners or paper again except in very rare circumstances...
Anyone have a good approach to the legal signature problem?
Just force everyone to use a versioning system. Wouldnt take a lot of tweaks to make an existing open source versioning system suitable for various types of data sets after all. Just depends on whether the data you are using is compressed, but even so the meta data and analysis associated with the raw data is unlikely to be compressed... the hard part would be convincing everyone involved to actually use it. jmho and ymmv of course...;-)
In point of fact, democracy has also failed everywhere it has been tried. As has every other political system so far. Nothing lasts forever, and sometimes you just have to clear the boards and start over, hopefully having learned something from previous efforts.;-)
The real answer to this is that if you actually want something done, get an engineer. Or a mathematician. Or a physicist. If you want to write tracts, pamphlets, get media attention, or anything like that, then you go prospect the philosophers and the liberal arts folks.
But if you want to build something, you find an engineer. Especially as the math/physics guys are likely to spend an infinite amount of time trying to figure out how to do it right rather than just getting it done.;-) Why is this newsworthy, again?
Thats just blatantly untrue for me anyway - i am using the VirtualBox open source edition extremely frequently and i get USB support out of the box for input devices, mass storage, etc. So far i havent found anything 'bad' about it, and trust me, i have been looking. Are you using the latest versions and have you actually *tried* the USB support?
Frankly i like VirtualBox better than any other commercial or open source solution for virtualization, and i have tried them all. Maybe when a good microkernel virtualization system comes out that handles devices including graphics well, but until then or i run across something VirtualBox doesnt support, it has my vote...
This is really awesome. I love solidworks and autocad inventor, great apps. But of course, they waited to give out free windows licences till just about a month *after* i got rid of my only remaining microsoft machines which were used exclusively to run these two applications. bah humbug, after finally getting out from under the microsoft heel now i have to go back again. At least i still have xp pro licences lying around.;-)
By the way, a friend of mine actually recently wrote an interesting article about how engineers can do their own small scale manufacturing. Its in product design and development magazine, and the article can be found here.
Basically my quick version:
1) start a corporation 2) buy your own CnC/rapid prototyping tech or plan to outsource prototyping efforts 3) build prototype 4) use rapid prototyping techniques to refine product 4) outsource final product manufacturing 5) sell product online through various channels 6) profit!
Actually makes quite a bit of sense these days. I wrote a short article about the current trend toward decentralized manufacturing as well...
Surveyors, military, and police folks often find uses for kit like this. If you have the cash, it is not too difficult to find binocular devices with integral laser rangefinder, camera, gps, compass, etc. I have often thought that there would be high demand for a consumer grade version - automated location tagging and sizing features would seem fairly desirable. A quick survey of some of the current military devices can be found here.
I agree completely. You start out thinking everyone is out to steal your precious, unique ideas, then after the first few patents or companies you start you realize a couple of things:
1) The idea itself is at most 10-20% of the insight and work required to get something off the ground. 2) If the idea is easy enough to do that almost anyone could steal and implement it, you should probably try another idea. 3) The kinds of people who are going to put the sweat equity into developing an invention or company most likely will do so on one of *their* ideas, not get all excited about one of yours. 4) Ask a lawyer, most NDA's dont work anyway. I usually get them signed, but more as part of the process than with the real expectation they will be useful. And only after the negotiations get serious - usually i have disclosed the core of the idea already. 5) Its really not that common to have a 'truly unique' idea. Most likely someone, somewhere has thought about it or something like it, even if it hasnt shown up in the prior art yet. 6) If you are the kind of person who comes up with original ideas, you will have more than you know what to do with. In my experience, folks either come up with 0 or hundreds of good ideas. Not too many come up with between 1 and 10 good ideas. 7) Learning to judge the 'profitability index' and 'effort index' of new ideas is the key to repeated success. If my experience is any guide, you will leave at least 10 good, original, and commercially viable ideas on the shelf for every one you actually pursue. Maybe more like 50 to one.
Ok, now i gotta stop giving away all my hard won insights in this area for free.;-)
Shameless attention seeking behavior - contact me here if you have questions about this sort of thing. Always willing to chat with new folks. I even have a very nice bilateral non disclosure agreement that has stood the test of time you could easily adapt to your needs.
I must admit, some of the best international academic research side computer scientists I have found to be European. Especially Italy, Spain, and France if i had to pick three off the top of my head. They also tend to have lots of summer exchange programs if you are into research. That, and somehow the environment is actually better at stimulating real innovation than it is here in the states. At least in the past 8-10 years or so in North America most of the serious cutting edge stuff is done in the corporate world, whereas in Europe the academic guys are doing cutting edge stuff.
Strange how these things change. As always, this is just my own personal opinion...
Slashdot Mirror
One of my good buddies has been working on this for a while. Continuous build, test, deploy infrastructure in the cloud - pretty cool stuff, and its a pain to do it right in house, so a good candidate for outsourcing. Disclaimer - I dont work for these guys, nor have I actually used their services. Yet. ;-)
https://circleci.com/
Too late. ;-)
Fortunately the only thing that matters in a hiring decision for me is demonstrable competence. You could be a cruelly mutated sea snail, and if you demonstrate the ability to solve hard problems, have a healthy sense of curiosity (and ideally a sense of humor), and seem likely to be able to work well with others, thats all that matters. The metric above is mostly for entertainment, but I *dare* you to plot some of your business associates. For maximal entertainment, pick folks on the financial side ... VCs tend to work better than most in my experience, but YMMV. ;-)
I have a similar metric built after years in business, tech, VC, etc. Its quite simple, totally not politically correct, and very tongue in cheek. But for your entertainment:
Dimensions for analysis:
x-axis factors:
1) Height short -> tall
2) "WASPiness" waspy -> non-waspy
3) Sex "female" -> "male"
4) attractiveness troll -> model
x-axis, (0-N)=1+2+3+4
y-axis factor:
5) Odds of Incompetence likely useless -> potential illuminati
y-axis, (0-N)=5
So it turns out the further away from the origin (0) you get on the x axis, the closer to the origin (0) you get on the y axis. That is, the taller, waspier, more 'male', and more attractive you are the higher are the odds that you are incompetent in every sense of the word. So if you ever meet a short, non-waspy, non-male, unattractive person in a position of power, be very, very careful. They are probably extremely competent. ;-)
This model is clearly US centric, btw, I suspect it wouldn't hold up very well internationally ....
I dunno about that, I am stuck working with Windows mostly because of SolidWorks and Autocad. Find me a reasonably comparable open source alternative, or even something I can buy for linux and I could drop Windows like a hot potato. And no, Blender just doesn't cut it yet ... ;-)
But for coding, number crunching, analysis, or anything else linux comes up trumps. And I still cannot believe folks actually use Eclipse for anything serious. heh.
Uh yeah, so that happens on a not infrequent basis. Its called 'extraordinary rendition'.
Might want to start paying attention ... ;-)
Is it wrong that my first response to this post was 'i bet you could make a cell phone jammer detection app'? The idea of the cell phone arms race spiraling out of control intrigues me. ;-)
Absolutely. Which is why this visualization is not useful. Now if they mapped the intersection of population density and cell coverage, that would be interesting. ;-)
You bring up a key point. Despite how 'mainstream' the geek has become, if my buddies and i get fired up about something *actually technical or science related* when we are out and about with the gadfly crowd the coolness meter goes down real quick. Doesnt matter how 'cool' people think the geekery is, the evidence still suggests actually being passionate about science and technology isnt going to be your shortcut to the in crowd. Probably never will be, but *that* would be a change i could get excited about. ;-)
BTW, in my experience going with any onboard sound card is not the best way to go these days. I used to use lots of different high end sound cards, but now that new high end DACs (digital analog converter) actually have USB input, the best way to get sound out of a computer/digital device is the same way you get it off a high end turntable or CD transport - go from source to DAC, then convert it. The device drivers that allow you to treat an attached USB device as a digital audio device are very good, available for all platforms, and quite simple.
So forget the sound card completely (and definitely dont use the onboard sound), go with a DAC that has USB and you will be amazed. Can also pick and choose a DAC that suits your requirements and pricepoint without messing about with your system config ... Like i said, this is a huge deal for folks who like to use computer based audio sources. Least it has been for me ...
Really? A fictional guy when there are so many more unbelievable real folks to choose from? Maybe Leonardo da Vinci? I mean, he was so cool he had a cartoon superhero named after *him*. Ok, so it was a mutant turtle, but still ... ;-)
VirtualBox on Android. Why not?
Or at least some sort of microkernel based virtualization ... forget about antivirus, firewalls, and all that noise. Just give me a fire and forget OS that is refreshed anew with each power cycle. My cell phone is *supposed* to be an appliance, after all. Keep the data on the network, and refresh the OS from a known good copy every time i turn it on ...
Who am i kidding, there is too much money in OS vulnerabilities for this to ever fly ... ;-)
Only one thing, really. Contracts and other signed documents. As far as i know there is no way to electronically sign formal contracts in a generally accepted fashion. If that capability was available i would never use faxes/scanners or paper again except in very rare circumstances ...
Anyone have a good approach to the legal signature problem?
Just force everyone to use a versioning system. Wouldnt take a lot of tweaks to make an existing open source versioning system suitable for various types of data sets after all. Just depends on whether the data you are using is compressed, but even so the meta data and analysis associated with the raw data is unlikely to be compressed ... the hard part would be convincing everyone involved to actually use it. jmho and ymmv of course ... ;-)
In point of fact, democracy has also failed everywhere it has been tried. As has every other political system so far. Nothing lasts forever, and sometimes you just have to clear the boards and start over, hopefully having learned something from previous efforts. ;-)
No, no, you dont squeeze the contaminants out, you refine em out. Presto instead of a cost center disposal has become a profit center. ;-)
The real answer to this is that if you actually want something done, get an engineer. Or a mathematician. Or a physicist. If you want to write tracts, pamphlets, get media attention, or anything like that, then you go prospect the philosophers and the liberal arts folks.
But if you want to build something, you find an engineer. Especially as the math/physics guys are likely to spend an infinite amount of time trying to figure out how to do it right rather than just getting it done. ;-) Why is this newsworthy, again?
Thats just blatantly untrue for me anyway - i am using the VirtualBox open source edition extremely frequently and i get USB support out of the box for input devices, mass storage, etc. So far i havent found anything 'bad' about it, and trust me, i have been looking. Are you using the latest versions and have you actually *tried* the USB support?
Frankly i like VirtualBox better than any other commercial or open source solution for virtualization, and i have tried them all. Maybe when a good microkernel virtualization system comes out that handles devices including graphics well, but until then or i run across something VirtualBox doesnt support, it has my vote ...
This is really awesome. I love solidworks and autocad inventor, great apps. But of course, they waited to give out free windows licences till just about a month *after* i got rid of my only remaining microsoft machines which were used exclusively to run these two applications. bah humbug, after finally getting out from under the microsoft heel now i have to go back again. At least i still have xp pro licences lying around. ;-)
I guess i just dont understand why they decided to use scala rather than a robust and long standing language like erlang. Odd design choice.
By the way, a friend of mine actually recently wrote an interesting article about how engineers can do their own small scale manufacturing. Its in product design and development magazine, and the article can be found here.
Basically my quick version:
1) start a corporation
2) buy your own CnC/rapid prototyping tech or plan to outsource prototyping efforts
3) build prototype
4) use rapid prototyping techniques to refine product
4) outsource final product manufacturing
5) sell product online through various channels
6) profit!
Actually makes quite a bit of sense these days. I wrote a short article about the current trend toward decentralized manufacturing as well ...
Surveyors, military, and police folks often find uses for kit like this. If you have the cash, it is not too difficult to find binocular devices with integral laser rangefinder, camera, gps, compass, etc. I have often thought that there would be high demand for a consumer grade version - automated location tagging and sizing features would seem fairly desirable. A quick survey of some of the current military devices can be found here.
So you are saying this is essentially a magnetic flux capacitor?
1985 here I come. ;-)
SOA means Service Oriented Architecture if anyone other than me loses track of the acronym generation machine occasionally. ;-)
I agree completely. You start out thinking everyone is out to steal your precious, unique ideas, then after the first few patents or companies you start you realize a couple of things:
1) The idea itself is at most 10-20% of the insight and work required to get something off the ground.
2) If the idea is easy enough to do that almost anyone could steal and implement it, you should probably try another idea.
3) The kinds of people who are going to put the sweat equity into developing an invention or company most likely will do so on one of *their* ideas, not get all excited about one of yours.
4) Ask a lawyer, most NDA's dont work anyway. I usually get them signed, but more as part of the process than with the real expectation they will be useful. And only after the negotiations get serious - usually i have disclosed the core of the idea already.
5) Its really not that common to have a 'truly unique' idea. Most likely someone, somewhere has thought about it or something like it, even if it hasnt shown up in the prior art yet.
6) If you are the kind of person who comes up with original ideas, you will have more than you know what to do with. In my experience, folks either come up with 0 or hundreds of good ideas. Not too many come up with between 1 and 10 good ideas.
7) Learning to judge the 'profitability index' and 'effort index' of new ideas is the key to repeated success. If my experience is any guide, you will leave at least 10 good, original, and commercially viable ideas on the shelf for every one you actually pursue. Maybe more like 50 to one.
Ok, now i gotta stop giving away all my hard won insights in this area for free. ;-)
Shameless attention seeking behavior - contact me here if you have questions about this sort of thing. Always willing to chat with new folks. I even have a very nice bilateral non disclosure agreement that has stood the test of time you could easily adapt to your needs.
I must admit, some of the best international academic research side computer scientists I have found to be European. Especially Italy, Spain, and France if i had to pick three off the top of my head. They also tend to have lots of summer exchange programs if you are into research. That, and somehow the environment is actually better at stimulating real innovation than it is here in the states. At least in the past 8-10 years or so in North America most of the serious cutting edge stuff is done in the corporate world, whereas in Europe the academic guys are doing cutting edge stuff.
Strange how these things change. As always, this is just my own personal opinion ...