I read that story too and paid close attention to this part: "helping an Iranian student buy an iPhone.... the sales rep denied their purchase." You think that Iranian student might have presented evidence of being an Iranian national when he was in the process of buying the product?
About a decade ago I saw Carnivore in operation. It was a demo for a privatized version. They pointed it at a radio show. It correctly logged ALL the speech in real time. It identified the speakers. It identified the topics they were discussing and when those topics changed and changed back to an earlier topic. It then wrote a summary of each discussion and a keyword map. It was running on something like a Pentium II with 2 gigs for RAM. and never got past 25% CPU utilization - if that.
Tweet that you need help moving the stuff and pass it on. When we had the big fire in Boulder pretty much everything was handled long before official responses but people on the #boulderfire twitter feed. Ask everyone in your social network to retweet the request. You'd be surprised how effective it is.
previous research and patterns (of which there's plenty)
core understanding of the problem the USER faces
common sense
usability testing and real user feedback
openness to change
understanding when not to change
coordinated discipline
Usability an art informed by cognitive science and engineering. What Linux distros tend to lack is coordinated discipline. They also get user feedback from a skewed population. Android gets feedback from a wide distribution of humanity and it shows. Ubuntu's mix of feedback shifted away from l33ts toward the mainstream and that drove them to make radical changes. Those changes may not serve any user base very well at the moment (I hate them) but they are clearly an attempt to reach out to the average user THROUGH DESIGN. If they keep processing feedback they have a good chance of refining that POS into something really great.
I'm typing this on a Macbook Air. I've used Ubuntu on a laptop since it came out and other linux variants since 1998. I switched for work purposes to Mac and, as another poster said, "The emperor has no clothes." It's not easier to use. It's prettier, but there are FAR more functions that require foreknowledge to execute on a Mac. There are ways to make a gesture on the multi-touch pad that make shit disappear! I'm a power user type guy so I dug in and learned all kinds of wonderful tricks but I can't imagine how grandma reacts to that shit. I think she just calls herself stupid.
As for the original post. Book design is a really ancient form of design informed by a great depth of tradition and knowledge. Unfortunately, the world of print has run screaming from the world of digital interfaces. SOME of that print knowledge has come over but not much. Print design theory is PRECISELY counter to the idea of the separation of form and content. The whole challenge in making a beautiful book is to UNIFY form and content. eBooks let you change the size and type of the font.... Some let you turn it sideways and read wide instead of long.... All that freedom DESTROYS book design. That freedom comes from giving the user choices about FORM that can't always be predicted and therefore can't be unified and previewed. What this calls for is a NEW form of design that brings book design and UI design together into a structure that benefits from all the behaviors listed in those bullet points at the top of this post.
Never expect people to appreciate and use automation for an activity they don't already do.
Everyone has to win (or go far, far away).
Under every position there is a need. Find the needs (including your's and your team's) and negotiate those. Negotiating at the level of positions ends up screwing everyone.
Trust but verify. Use the verification as a conduit to praising people. Praise people often.
If people don't know EXACTLY what's expected of them at work (even if "invent your job" is what's expected) they will eventually wither or leave. As a manager your job is to collaboratively discover and rediscover what's expected.
Do whatever you can to build the professional development of yourself and your team members into the quarterly work schedule. Excellent people are willing to spend some time on the boring stuff if they can count on some good stuff later but they can't be expected to wait forever.
Technology is a moving target. You're killing your company and your team members careers if you don't move with it.
Context is everything. For managing up and across - Learn how to set the context from the invites to the napkins at the roll-out meeting. Never lose sight of the other guy's frame of mind. I've seen really beautiful code go in the garbage because a VP thought the team was disorganized (not my team). For managing your teams - always make sure they have the tools and training they need. Have a process THAT YOU MANAGE for getting a new team member fully integrated into the team and the company.
Build the work of effectively presenting results into the plan.
Collective Intelligence works. Systematize the sharing of knowledge and the decisions to act on it. Situation awareness and decision tempo require work and discipline on everyone's part.
It's all about people forming teams and collectively producing results. Celebrate often with the goal of getting everyone knowing what to expect from each other. People need to be comfortable enough with each other to ask potentially stupid questions... to push back... to assume they can politely schedule someone else's time.... Your team can't be strangers to each other or they will have problems.
Why limit your "what if" to the US. We're already seeing what happens with walled gardens in totalitarian regimes today. The gardeners tow the government line and the users deal with limited power. If the "Arab Spring" or OWS was attempted under Chinese policy those protesters would have been sending smoke signals to try to communicate.
PCs (especially ones running BSD and Linux) have a WAY higher probability of adapting fast to censorship. It's already happening with DRM, bittorrent, etc... Walled gardens aren't inherently bad but the trade-offs are real and have long range impact.
By definition, in a debt money system like our's, there is never enough money to pay the debt. The debt is what creates the money in the first place. You can move the debt around from the public to the private sector and back but one man's home sale is another man's mortgage.
For the kind of constant, ad hoc, data nagging your talking about the above would be a good start. Using something like MSSQL Analysis Services with Excel on top.... Or (get ready to feel really dirty) MS Access pivot tables....
I haven't pointed someone toward the Microsoft in a while but if you don't have serious programming chops you're best bet is cubes in Access and they will take you quite far. They are extremely similar to Excel Pivot Tables. If you haven't explored Pivot Tables in Excel, there's a possibility that half your battles will be won there on the data as you currently have it.
A more static but open source solution at the scale of Excel Pivot Tables is OpenOffice data pivot functionality. In fact, you might be able to put something together where OpenOffice Calc sits on top of MySQL! That get's you database, spreadsheet and pivot. Any super serious stats can be handled in R....
You want to be loyal but you don't want to be hurt long term for it. Tell your employers your situation and give them the option of a long term employment contract. 3-5 years that includes raises, vacations, benefits, bonuses the whole bit. Be open and honest about it. From what you've said there's a very short time frame, that works in your favor. You can even tell the people you're going to work for that you have to give your current employer a chance to make it worth your while to stay because its a critical time for them.
If they say they can't get the contract done in time tell them that's not an option. Be nice, really helpful, but firm.
Have a lawyer available to quickly review the contract and make changes. Work with him to define your limits up front. Let your employer know that you understand this costs money and that you're also paying someone to expedite your response.
Chances are you'll end up working for the other company but you'll have been a stand up guy about it. You current employers will know that they had a chance to keep you and feel there (very real) participation in your choice. They could have given you a contract like that much earlier on their own initiative...
In business, loyalty without solid commitments on paper is a time bomb.
These guys deserve anything they're getting. They asked for it. Anybody who sues someone has a bit of a responsibility to figure out who they are suing and why. I'm actually afraid they will see how critical this is and think it's a potential source of money. That would ruin them and hurt Olsen et al.
Nice. Did you check out the pictures of these people? They have a Facebook presence. They look like the people who get helped to their chairs at the church social. That marketing lady is going to drop her dentures on the keyboard when she reads your email then start crying. You meany!! LOL
I think we need to politely explain to the marketing director et al at Astrolabe how they're action could adversely effect their brand. And how all they are doing is damaging someone who is generously providing an important service. My guess is that these guys are completely unaware of how much ill will they are in for online. For instance, a couple weeks of work by a tiny fraction of the people reading this could create an open source Astrology app that would render their offering permanently obsolete. I can't imagine how they came to launch this lawsuit in the first place but I can imagine how ignorant they could be of its implications for them and the world of computing.
The premise of this article is deeply flawed! Apple's products are is a *NIXs. Microsoft's are, well, Microsoft's.
Darwin is a BSD fork. It should take it's security cues from OpenBSD, not Microsoft. Apple excels at ease of use. OpenBSD shoves ease of use completely aside in favor of security. They both are excellent at what they do. Is Microsoft excellent at what they do? Are they excellent at security? Who is going to have more to teach in the real world that can be implemented tomorrow?
The only argument for a fit between Microsoft and Apple on this is that Microsoft has dealt with the behavioral issues of security. If you just spit your coffee at the screen then you know how I feel about that statement. Apple has NOTHING to learn from Microsoft about user experience and Microsoft has nothing to offer a *NIX that it can't get better (and with way less baggage) from OpenBSD.
I'm not an Apple fanboy but, if I were confronting learning a new language right now, I'd learn Objective C and focus on iPad development. Then I'd focus on whatever language and framework serves it's biggest competitor best. right now Android is looking good but you've got at least 2 years before you should even think about anything other than Objective C.
WHY, Objective C? Why iPad development? Well, it looks like your accustomed to DECENTLY DOCUMENTED LANGUAGES AND FRAMEWORKS. iPad developers enjoy the best documentation in the industry. You're first task is to update the markets you serve - iPads cover the mobile and tablet markets. Your next task is to become platform agnostic after proving your value in iPad development.
Old, experienced guys are turned to every time the enterprise transitions a technology from the exciting PR move to the mission critical line of business. If I were you I'd take a PM role once every 4 years or so to keep that option open and do what you love enough to excel at. (Yeah, I dangled a preposition)
I don't buy the patent office fee argument. If that was their motive there wouldn't be a backlog. Asshats who pull that kind of thing with government fees are always also asshats who want to maximize their direct reports. Bureaucrats are measured by the size of their institution, not by it's "profits."
You can accomplish that by patenting and then "open sourcing" the patent. If all they're doing is filing these shitty patents and there's no evidence that they are widening their own claim to include the world.... FAIL.
Slashdot Mirror
I read that story too and paid close attention to this part: "helping an Iranian student buy an iPhone.... the sales rep denied their purchase." You think that Iranian student might have presented evidence of being an Iranian national when he was in the process of buying the product?
Why not build things that require big current / power stuff?
Rail gun: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP4pL2fZQBo&feature=related
Tesla Coil: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-build-a-Tesla-Coil/
Jacob's ladder: http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/212_spring2005.web.dir/kenneth_sweet/
You could totally over-build the stuff so it looks awesome and lasts a few generations!
Also, on a non-electrical note, these: http://www.en.boehm-stirling.com/ are totally awesome and come in kit form.
About a decade ago I saw Carnivore in operation. It was a demo for a privatized version. They pointed it at a radio show. It correctly logged ALL the speech in real time. It identified the speakers. It identified the topics they were discussing and when those topics changed and changed back to an earlier topic. It then wrote a summary of each discussion and a keyword map. It was running on something like a Pentium II with 2 gigs for RAM. and never got past 25% CPU utilization - if that.
Tweet that you need help moving the stuff and pass it on. When we had the big fire in Boulder pretty much everything was handled long before official responses but people on the #boulderfire twitter feed. Ask everyone in your social network to retweet the request. You'd be surprised how effective it is.
It uses H3O3.... HO HO HO...
Usability comes from the following:
Usability an art informed by cognitive science and engineering. What Linux distros tend to lack is coordinated discipline. They also get user feedback from a skewed population. Android gets feedback from a wide distribution of humanity and it shows. Ubuntu's mix of feedback shifted away from l33ts toward the mainstream and that drove them to make radical changes. Those changes may not serve any user base very well at the moment (I hate them) but they are clearly an attempt to reach out to the average user THROUGH DESIGN. If they keep processing feedback they have a good chance of refining that POS into something really great.
I'm typing this on a Macbook Air. I've used Ubuntu on a laptop since it came out and other linux variants since 1998. I switched for work purposes to Mac and, as another poster said, "The emperor has no clothes." It's not easier to use. It's prettier, but there are FAR more functions that require foreknowledge to execute on a Mac. There are ways to make a gesture on the multi-touch pad that make shit disappear! I'm a power user type guy so I dug in and learned all kinds of wonderful tricks but I can't imagine how grandma reacts to that shit. I think she just calls herself stupid.
As for the original post. Book design is a really ancient form of design informed by a great depth of tradition and knowledge. Unfortunately, the world of print has run screaming from the world of digital interfaces. SOME of that print knowledge has come over but not much. Print design theory is PRECISELY counter to the idea of the separation of form and content. The whole challenge in making a beautiful book is to UNIFY form and content. eBooks let you change the size and type of the font.... Some let you turn it sideways and read wide instead of long.... All that freedom DESTROYS book design. That freedom comes from giving the user choices about FORM that can't always be predicted and therefore can't be unified and previewed. What this calls for is a NEW form of design that brings book design and UI design together into a structure that benefits from all the behaviors listed in those bullet points at the top of this post.
I have a few rules that might help:
Good luck.
Is there a distributed computing platform that does for storage what SETI et al do for processing? Anyone want to build one?
Why limit your "what if" to the US. We're already seeing what happens with walled gardens in totalitarian regimes today. The gardeners tow the government line and the users deal with limited power. If the "Arab Spring" or OWS was attempted under Chinese policy those protesters would have been sending smoke signals to try to communicate.
PCs (especially ones running BSD and Linux) have a WAY higher probability of adapting fast to censorship. It's already happening with DRM, bittorrent, etc... Walled gardens aren't inherently bad but the trade-offs are real and have long range impact.
By definition, in a debt money system like our's, there is never enough money to pay the debt. The debt is what creates the money in the first place. You can move the debt around from the public to the private sector and back but one man's home sale is another man's mortgage.
Here's something that might give you a direction.
DataMart-Tool.pdf
For the kind of constant, ad hoc, data nagging your talking about the above would be a good start. Using something like MSSQL Analysis Services with Excel on top.... Or (get ready to feel really dirty) MS Access pivot tables....
I haven't pointed someone toward the Microsoft in a while but if you don't have serious programming chops you're best bet is cubes in Access and they will take you quite far. They are extremely similar to Excel Pivot Tables. If you haven't explored Pivot Tables in Excel, there's a possibility that half your battles will be won there on the data as you currently have it.
A more static but open source solution at the scale of Excel Pivot Tables is OpenOffice data pivot functionality. In fact, you might be able to put something together where OpenOffice Calc sits on top of MySQL! That get's you database, spreadsheet and pivot. Any super serious stats can be handled in R....
You want to be loyal but you don't want to be hurt long term for it. Tell your employers your situation and give them the option of a long term employment contract. 3-5 years that includes raises, vacations, benefits, bonuses the whole bit. Be open and honest about it. From what you've said there's a very short time frame, that works in your favor. You can even tell the people you're going to work for that you have to give your current employer a chance to make it worth your while to stay because its a critical time for them.
If they say they can't get the contract done in time tell them that's not an option. Be nice, really helpful, but firm.
Have a lawyer available to quickly review the contract and make changes. Work with him to define your limits up front. Let your employer know that you understand this costs money and that you're also paying someone to expedite your response.
Chances are you'll end up working for the other company but you'll have been a stand up guy about it. You current employers will know that they had a chance to keep you and feel there (very real) participation in your choice. They could have given you a contract like that much earlier on their own initiative...
In business, loyalty without solid commitments on paper is a time bomb.
These guys deserve anything they're getting. They asked for it. Anybody who sues someone has a bit of a responsibility to figure out who they are suing and why. I'm actually afraid they will see how critical this is and think it's a potential source of money. That would ruin them and hurt Olsen et al.
Nice. Did you check out the pictures of these people? They have a Facebook presence. They look like the people who get helped to their chairs at the church social. That marketing lady is going to drop her dentures on the keyboard when she reads your email then start crying. You meany!! LOL
http://alabe.com/contact.html
I think we need to politely explain to the marketing director et al at Astrolabe how they're action could adversely effect their brand. And how all they are doing is damaging someone who is generously providing an important service. My guess is that these guys are completely unaware of how much ill will they are in for online. For instance, a couple weeks of work by a tiny fraction of the people reading this could create an open source Astrology app that would render their offering permanently obsolete. I can't imagine how they came to launch this lawsuit in the first place but I can imagine how ignorant they could be of its implications for them and the world of computing.
...for a shareholder lawsuit against UBS.
The premise of this article is deeply flawed! Apple's products are is a *NIXs. Microsoft's are, well, Microsoft's.
Darwin is a BSD fork. It should take it's security cues from OpenBSD, not Microsoft. Apple excels at ease of use. OpenBSD shoves ease of use completely aside in favor of security. They both are excellent at what they do. Is Microsoft excellent at what they do? Are they excellent at security? Who is going to have more to teach in the real world that can be implemented tomorrow?
The only argument for a fit between Microsoft and Apple on this is that Microsoft has dealt with the behavioral issues of security. If you just spit your coffee at the screen then you know how I feel about that statement. Apple has NOTHING to learn from Microsoft about user experience and Microsoft has nothing to offer a *NIX that it can't get better (and with way less baggage) from OpenBSD.
I'm not an Apple fanboy but, if I were confronting learning a new language right now, I'd learn Objective C and focus on iPad development. Then I'd focus on whatever language and framework serves it's biggest competitor best. right now Android is looking good but you've got at least 2 years before you should even think about anything other than Objective C.
WHY, Objective C? Why iPad development? Well, it looks like your accustomed to DECENTLY DOCUMENTED LANGUAGES AND FRAMEWORKS. iPad developers enjoy the best documentation in the industry. You're first task is to update the markets you serve - iPads cover the mobile and tablet markets. Your next task is to become platform agnostic after proving your value in iPad development.
Old, experienced guys are turned to every time the enterprise transitions a technology from the exciting PR move to the mission critical line of business. If I were you I'd take a PM role once every 4 years or so to keep that option open and do what you love enough to excel at. (Yeah, I dangled a preposition)
I don't buy the patent office fee argument. If that was their motive there wouldn't be a backlog. Asshats who pull that kind of thing with government fees are always also asshats who want to maximize their direct reports. Bureaucrats are measured by the size of their institution, not by it's "profits."
So you patent every f**king thing on earth just to have ammunition in your gun? Wow, that's bleak.
You can accomplish that by patenting and then "open sourcing" the patent. If all they're doing is filing these shitty patents and there's no evidence that they are widening their own claim to include the world.... FAIL.
Silly me... I looked up tentacle porn....
Is there really such thing as tentacle porn? I don't want to look it up.
Don't forget Torrents.... When was that closed source?
That's what the INTERNET is for!!!