I like your cooking analogy, but there's one thing missing:
One thing I can't stress enough to people is that programming is all DESIGN/ARCHITECTURE. The "do" part is essentially instantaneous. You figure out how to do something and write it down, in every minute detail (in code) and it's basically done. Then you compile it (or not even for some things). This process is nearly instantaneous (perhaps minutes but never days for almost any project, and never something you need to do yourself...)
To expand your cooking analogy, it would be like you work really hard on these recipies, but whenever you want you can "zap" create a new set of dishes. (Except that then you have to taste them all again to make sure your changes are ok..)
This is fundamentally different from the construction of anything else ever in my opinion. Code is akin to a recipe or blueprint. The "compile" part of programming, which takes zero work on the part of the programmer, replaces what is one of the longest and most costly parts of developing anything else.
Furthermore, it replaces the only part that you can reliably predict the duration of - making it very, very difficult to predict how long it will take to develop a piece of software.
I think it's important to realize that this makes software much faster to develop - if less predictable - but therefore we develop much more complex things in software. So to borrow from another analogy I saw here - because we don't have to physically build them, the expectation when building a car is that it'll have every feature of any car, boat, bicycle or plane that ever existed.
(The other important ramification is that it never saves developer time to remove an existing feature - and in an agile development process it may take more time to DECIDE whether a feature is important than it would have to simply implement it.
1. You've confused criminal actions, civil liability and theft of services.
2. The process of being out of BSA compliance is hugely worse than even a substantial penalty for anything you might not have bought. They basically shut you down EVEN IF YOU ARE IN COMPLIANCE. All it takes in an unhappy employee making a phone call...
First off, out of compliance does NOT mean you have more installations than you paid for copies of. It means you have more installations that you can instantly produce proof of. Which is NOT the same thing. You have to prove that your innocent, on demand, whenever they decide to come knocking.
I don't know about that place in particular, but many places of this scale might, for instance buy all their PCs from Dell et all and pay the Windows tax on all of them at ship time. If they never upgrade to a new major OS version (buying new PCs faster than they get around to upgrading new ones) they have never, ever needed to buy an OS license.
However, if they lose one COA they are STILL out of compliance - even though they paid for every single license.
So: A) It's not criminal anyway - it's only civil liability. If it was criminal the burden of proof would be on THEM to prove you did it.
B) Even though the civil burden of guilt is lighter, the burden of proof is never supposed to be firmly on you to prove your innocent. Their EULA requires not only that you DID buy the software but that you can prove your innocence on demand. IANAL, but I don't think this would hold up if SCOTUS ever got around to hearing it. But someone would have to have a zillion $ to fight M$ that long.
2. They basically come take all your computers away and shut down your business indefinitely. That's massively different than charging you - even charging you 100x for any missing licenses. And EVEN IF THEY'RE WRONG they do nothing to compensate you for this lost time. And you can't sue them for it, because the BSA has no assets themselves, supposedly - or not assets enough to sustain the legal fees for a big court case.
There are all kinds of teams like this. Mercenary teams, teams constructed on-the-fly of freelancers, teams leftover from somebody else's emergency project, teams that are slices of bigger companies. We reply to projects on such sites - particularly guru.com. We're probably too busy, and possibly too small, but contact me if you like. You didn't specify what kind of development or platform you're targeting; that makes a difference, too.
The big problem you have is you can't trust anyone. Even if you read all my/. posts and get convinced I have the perfect attitude, you have no way to know whether I really know my stuff. All of the normal HR stuff applies - resumes, references, portfolios. But it's still hard to tell.
Personally, I don't trust companies nearly as much as I trust individuals. So regardless of the company size, I wouldn't hire a team unless I trust someone who is in a position of authority.
If you don't have the time or money to do a recruiting cycle, you don't really have the time or money to get your project done. The steps you need to do to ensure that you have chosen a talented and professional team are the same ones you would need to do to individuals - and you should probably do it to all of the individuals. And they'll need to gel with your existing developer; you're not going to save much.
Regarding the article, they are only scanned books from before 1923 - for which the copyright has expired. Copyright USED to expire - the whole point of both copyrights and patents was that they grant the author a SHORT period of exclusivity to encourage creation.
But that's not true anymore. Currently copyrights have an expiration date, but the expiration date has consistently gotten farther away faster than it has gotten closer.
Essentially NOTHING expires now unless somebody didn't do their paperwork.
That is, our Congress - with heavy contributions of the media lobby and sometimes with laws actually written by them - extends copyright by more years than have gone by since the last time they did it.
This is RETROACTIVELY true, in clear opposition to the intent of copyright law. (Any works already created are CLEARLY not encouraged by the extension of their copyright)
This is one of the best examples of our need to take back our government and elect officials who care about citizens. Personally I believe intensive campaign finance reform is the only solution.
I believe there was an incident a couple years ago where the South Pole DOCTOR needed surgury. Possibly to remove a cancerous tumor or something. So they were having someone not an MD perform surgury.
I am not a lawyer, but I think you're violating the GPL. Under the current GPL I think this assumes you're actually SELLING the custom devices - not, for instance, renting them out.
Please note that you don't have to let your entire application be available for download, just the modified GPL parts. Most of the good bits of Linux Tivo don't have available source code, and that's ok.
Also, it doesn't specifically have to be download or totally free - offering to mail CDs for a small fee is acceptable. But if they're expensive _enough_ someone will buy one copy of the source and then offer copies - of those free parts - themselves, and that's legal.
My biggest advice is don't move into the contracting world until you have clients. Try to get some relationships doing afterhours work, and or try to land at least one big ongoing contracting gig without enough lead time to quit your job when you get it.
When you can't possibly keep up with the work is when you should quit your day job, and you probably won't have either enough work or money at that point.
Expect that you'll spend a lot of time self-marketing and that it may take a long time to substantially add to your number of clients.
The taxes are a bit worse on paper - because you're paying stuff that previously your employer never showed you. But also bear in mind that you need to pay attention to estimated taxes; it is a lot easier to feel afloat before that.
In most US theaters you're not supposed to take anything in but they aren't at all effective at checking you.
At the root of this is profiteering. But the other cause is US Health Codes and insurance, which generally prohibit places from selling food and letting you eat your own food.
But at some theaters they have all manner of different rules. Some are expensive and serve fine cuisine and wine at your seat. Some are beer-based "Brew&View" theaters. Some of these sell liquor, some just let you bring whatever you want. There are definitely some small inexpensive theaters that let you bring whatever you want. Often they either don't have their own concessions or the concessions are somewhat separate from the theater.
IF you are a worst-case environmental offender with your lawn, and the legal, economic or social situation hasn't yet evolved a way to get you to behave in a way that is substantially less harmful to the environment, plastic grass might be be less harmful to it than your terrible behavior with the real grass.
Did I inappropriately summarize your point in some way?
But I still sustain that if you're discussing making the situation really better you shouldn't overlook the much better solutions in favor of the slightly better one.
Anyone putting in fake grass BECAUSE it is good for the environment is not doing the right thing for the environment.
Your argument is essentially that you're better off to buy a car with slightly better gas mileage since you're driving 50,000 miles a year. My argument is that for most people there is no need to drive those 50,000 miles, and cutting down on it is more important. In most cases it IS better to own an SUV than to routinely have to make multiple trips with a smaller car... if you actually need that much space. (And, if so you should probably get a van or minivan instead of an SUV...)
Just because some people excessively fertilize and water doesn't mean you have to do it. And it really does matter what breed of grass you use for where you are. If you want to be good for the environment find green ways to keep your lawn green - or don't do it and do something else.
Our recycling of some types of plastic is fine, but most of them amount to "we chop it up and there are a very few things we can make out of it" It is much more likely to just be landfilled than aluminum.
That some rare freaks use 240 gallons of water a day doesn't surprise me - that doesn't mean they're a good standard for being enviromentally friendly.
You ignored me, but I wasn't kidding about the watering not being that bad in lots of places... basically anywhere that gets their water from a nearby stationary source - if it rains someitmes and you're near a lake, it's probably not a big deal* because it rapidly returns to its natural cycle.
On the other hand, if you're piping water thousands of miles from a mountain-fed river into a desert, you shouldn't have a lawn - you live in a freakin' desert. That water is not going to return to its natural place anytime soon, if at all.
*Of course, there is some energy cost involved in processing the water before it got to your lawn and then getting it there. Since it doesn't need to be potable, you'd be even better off to pump it from a local source directly onto your lawn without processing.
I have a bridge I'd like to sell you over Lake Pontchartrain.
In general, fake grass is not better for the environment by any stretch of the imagination.
1. Made from plastic, from oil. 2. Plants make oxygen. 3. Grass doesn't require fertilizer, and watering usually doesn't hurt.
To clarify: use plants appropriate to your climate. If you live in a desert, using real OR fake grass is bad for the environment.
If you live somewhere it actually rains, most of the time moderate watering grass ISN'T bad for the environment, because that water goes back into the environment - largely as immediate humidity. And you only need moderate watering if you use the right plants.
I'm sure you've gotten a lot of good answers, especially ones about a lot of details (lighting, refresh rates etc) So I'm only going to talk about things where I think I can add something special, but I've thought quite a lot about some of these. Everyone please critque my ideas; some of these are changes I plan on making.
I completely agree about screen real estate. I'm a developer, I use 2 21" monitors and 1 or two laptops simultaneously - and there are times that more realestate would speed me up. I think this is the single most important speed aid, as long as your computers can reasonable handle what you need to do.
Decide on a machine to be your server and give it all the files. Make sure it is backed up regularly and make any other machines share from it. (This could also be your main workstation, but it doesn't have to be)
Currently I have one monitor on a KVM and one monitor on a V switch. This leaves me with a moderately manageable 2 keyboards and mice. My primary computer (dedicated KM) has left as its primary and my secondard computer has right as its primary - fairly often I use them one each. I'm also using 4 port switches, so I can have several other computers running if I'm doing hardware work or some such.
However, I don't think this setup is truly optimal. In my next revision the primary responsibility of my main desktop will be to run many monitors and many windows with VNC. The VNC model gives you fine-grained control over what windows go where and lets you easily copy and paste between them. It also lets you quickly and without virtualization overhead run in a variety of environments - and as a bonus it lets you reap some benefits of a pseudocluster. With all the files on a server you could utilize several machines to do whichever work is convenient.
As a bonus, this lets you resist the urge to have 30 machines under your desk, which is bad for noise, heat etc. You can keep those 30 machines whereever you can stretch ethernet : )
I'd like to mention Serenity, a desktop-sharing application. (I haven't gotten around to using it yet, but it is well-reviewed) It bills itself as a software KVM, and I'm sure it does that (except that before I install it I'll skip to VNC.) But it lets you do something no hardware KVM can - drag the mouse right from one desktop onto another (along with clipboard support) I see no point for monitors you always use together, but if sometimes your friend is going to borrow a computer and monitor you'd otherwise use this is excellent. Similarly, it's a great model for sitting that laptop next to your desktop.
Finally, all my reading is that sitting sucks. Try to find any other way to be. Standing, laying etc. I believe that with a split keyboard (where left and right halves come totally apart) you could pretty easily and effectively code laying down.
I completely agree that you're going to need to learn how to run Linux before you run Linux, but there are things you should do WHILE you are learning Linux:
0. Linux is a perfect OS for your server, but consider strongly whether you really want Linux for your workstations or you really want OSX. OSX provides a vastly superior interface for untrained users and generally supports most Linux software and a very large amount of professional software that Linux doesn't. If you're going to go with Linux, though...
1. First install Firefox and OpenOffice on everyone's Windows machine. For OOo make sure you do the/net install so it works for all users, and change the default file formats to the MSOfc ones in the configuration.
2. Get them used to Firefox. It's generally superior to IE, but the real reason to force it is better (but not perfect) security. Immediately convert their bookmarks and the default browser to Firefox; hide the obvious shortcuts to IE. Warn them that IE may be disabled.
3. Then get them used to OOo instead of MSOfc. This is likely your biggest cost savings; new workstations usually ship with the Windows tax anyway.
4. Find out what other applications they use, find out if there is a Linux version, an OSS equivalent, or if it runs in WINE. You are never going to transition anybody's workstation until they can perform all of their work functions in the new OS. This is going to take considerable time to indentify and solve.
5. Transition the server(s) to Linux on your next server upgrade. With the effectiveness of Samba, transferring your workstations and your server to Linux are mostly independent actions, but I highly recommend changing the server first.
6. After the server is settled, transition SOME workstations - starting with the ones you've settled point #4 on most completely. There WILL be problems, so don't migrate the whole office immediately. Most users, familiar with Windows, will be less happy with Linux than with Windows.
While I'm sure there are people on/. vastly more experienced than I am, I'm a professional technologist and have repeatedly executed this transition.
I highly recommend SuSE for someone in your position; it is a powerful Linux installation but also has Windows-style dialogs for all the configurations. While I'm sure there will be zealots for other flavors, I've found their configuration to be more straightforward and functional than the competition.
You don't need carte blanche, but you do need explicit approval for all the things you do. Preferably in writing and/or email.
First, write a letter to your boss.
List everything horrible going on clearly describe how your organization is standing in a minefield of security concerns and how the vulnerabilities present in IE, Windows, patching, firewalls etc. Point out how this will cause sudden unwarranted emergency problems. You can predict these problems, but you can't predict WHEN they will happen.
It is up to your boss, not you, to decide whether you should make unpopular decisions that prevent problems or you should just let things ride. Preferably publicly.
But if they decide to let it ride make sure they feel the pain of the problems when they do happen. If you are too good at cleaning up the mess they'll never see the point of fixing anything.
(Generally you don't want your boss to be making prioritization decisions about which stuff you should do first - you just want to paint it in simple terms: The teachers like some things, but they are going to blow up. I can fix it and make them unhappy now or it can blow up later and nothing will work.)
Second, get used to incremental changes and ride the wave of any problems. Basically, if a computer has any kind of problems it should get fixed with whatever else it needs and a firewall and Firefox renamed "Internet" "WWW" or "Interweb" - and IE should be missing from the desktop and all easy places in the start menu.
Don't ever publicize that you're making something a "mandate" - mandates are very unpopular and clearly they won't understand the rationale. Just make it part of fixing whatever problems someone had as you go along... If you showed up because THEY called YOU they have are less likely to be upset that you had to change things, because it isn't "for no reason".
Other points: Try to get a student assistant. There's probably some very talented free labor available.
Samba is great for your servers; OSX is overkill on the basic fileserver side and is more expensive. But OSX workstations and Samba servers work great together. OSX is NOT easier to use for someone used to Windows, but it IS easier to use for someone not used to computers at all.
I disagree with one of the other posters - the machines won't fail from water on the floor if it isn't on the machines; for even extreme seepage just put a bunch of wood under the machines. Similarly, backup power isn't your biggest concern (although redundant HDs should be) - you likely don't need to keep operating computers when the power is out.
These days with reasonable settings outlook isn't usually as dangerous as IE and the free alternatives to outlook aren't as superior as Firefox; I'd definitely start there.
Almost all laptops already come with multivoltage. In a small survey of a dozen or so I couldn't find one that didn't. Mostly the power bricks are rated for 50-60 Hz 100-240V - which covers everything commonly on the planet. Voltage conversion is the expensive electronic part of international power.
Then all you need is a _plug_ converter - that is, a piece of metal and plastic that makes it fit in the right holes. These are very cheap. For instance, a european/israeli plug is $0.99 from Bombay Electronics (online and on Devon in Chicago) The "international voltage kits" for laptops are usually just a bunch of of plugs/cables that have different ends, but don't pay too much.
Laptop makers ship the exact same converter with different ends everywhere in the world - that's how it works. Many of them have a removeable cord for the "to the wall" part - then they just use different cords. But you definitely don't need a "special" kit for most laptops.
Except the print carts that come with printers are usually even smaller and less full than the default retail ones - 50% or 25% as full.
I do honestly think your plan is sometimes a good deal, but it is hardly at the ratios your post suggests.
In addition, you haven't accounted for the time value of money (ie, interest you would have earned on $43 for several months) or the value of your time for processing the rebate or engaging in so many sales. You also have to account for the fact that sometimes the rebate companies will defraud you, at a mimimum taking additional time and money.
A lot of restaurants and many hotels preauthorize the maximum likely amount instead of the current total.
For instance, the excellent and incredible Safehouse Milwaukee authorizes 20% over your dinner bill. Then they actually charge whatever you pay for tip. Since the bill for dinner and drinks for a dozen people was substantial but we had paid the tip in cash, we noticed the increased amount of the preauthorization.
I've heard for a long time that servers prefer cash - which I think is true for tax and management purposes. But I've heard the reverse from some servers - due to theft from other servers and bussing staff. At least with a card they always get SOME of the tip.
I try to tip with cash and make sure to hand the payment + tip directly to the server.
Personally I think credit receipts with tip ought to print the maximum preauthorized amount (bill + 20-25%), the payment processors should refuse tip amounts higher than the preauth and to leave a higher tip you should either ask for a receipt with tip included or one with a higher preauth amount - and you should have to do it before they swipe your card. (or have them reswipe your card)
Toxoplamsa Gondii (that cat thing) is much worse than you think. The CDC alone has quite a bit of information, but it's not well organized. (Google +site:cdc.gov)
For instance: Humans can get it by eating infected meat, but ALSO by inhaling spores from infected cat feces. Be concerned about cleaning that litterbox! Common medical practice is only concerned with cases when the initial acute infection is especially severe, which is common in pregnancy (the fetus is vulnerable to death)
But the disease persists in the mammal brain even in asympomatic adults. And it has a noteable correlation with schizophrenia.
This is all from the CDC website, but from various different pages and studies.
I have a lot of respect for teachers. I think that on the whole they try hard despite being inadequately trained, paid, supplied and supported.
But that doesn't mean that school isn't babysitting. Most of the way schools are funded are about keeping students in seats for numbers of hours. The beauracracy is designed with that as the primary goal and learning as the secondary - or worse - goal. Frankly, the teachers have no control over this and the administrator of a given district doesn't have that much either.
And the resistance to change at all levels is tremendous.
There are several scientfically validated reasonably well-known systems that provide much better results in terms of learning - Precision Teaching is my favorite example.
PT has been implemented in many existing schools. Universally it gives improved results on whatever metrics you choose to measure it with. And fairly universally the answer has been to dismantle the PT structure because it made the previous way look so bad.
Morningside Academy, Ben Bronz Academy and the Judge Rotenburg Center all use principles of PT, and all of them take "slow" learners who are unsuccessful in mainstream public systems and not only have them keep up but usually actually _catch up_ to their mainstream peers. JRC also deals with extraordinarily severe behavioral issues.
The fact that it is possible for this catching up to routinely happens is clear evidence that we are doing our mainstream students a great disservice.
Here's what I've learned: Home support from anybody I've tried - Dell included - is really bad.
Dell Small Business support answers the phone promptly and is quite helpful. Probably a half-dozen issues, all resolved great. The last was probably a year ago.
Next-day onsite warranty support because a clients desktop CD-ROM drive was too loud. I didn't even have to go there, and I spent about 10 min on the phone total.
I tell everybody to buy their Dell from the Small Business division - the only differences are the packages and the support. The price is usually less. Applies to refurbs too - as long as they are Small Business refurbs.
It's all about Thrust (I think this was clearly explained in Chicken Run : )
Someone - Tesla, I believe - thought that flight would never be safe until we had greater than 1:1 thrust to weight ratios. For an airplane this means you can do a tailstand, accelerate, and fly upward.
While many modern fighter jets can accomplish this, it turns out he was being overconservative.
For a biological organism, this is easiest with tiny things - Dragonflys are a great example of agile, multidirectional flight.
For manmade aircraft the reverse is true - it's easier for us to deal with the overhead of the machine the larger it is.
Modern fixed wing aircraft are very good at getting the most lift possible for a given amount of engine. Birds aren't a great example of high engine power to lift wings - but a bird would be pretty useless at flying if it could only takeoff and land on a nice smooth, long runway.
So in my opinion we're finally getting enough excess power in fairly small machines to do things that are power-inefficient with the wings. Having fast, cheap microcontrollers helps a lot too.
I understand, sortof. On the one hand I completely agree that you have to look to the future - but there were quite a few kids in at the recent GenCons in Milwaukee too.
It's been mainstreamed and filtered. Like anything else, the REASON you do that is because more people will like it just enough rather than fewer people really loving it.
Essentially you used to find 80 things you loved and 20 you hated, now you find 8 you love, 2 you hate and 90 you sortof like. Which is better, sortof.
But relatively speaking it's more like TOP40 radio now and less like Indie. (Okay, it's not as bad as Payola radio, but that's the kind of DIRECTION I'm talking about)
And clearly there are exceptions - it isn't a monoculture, so people that make up the GenCon tapestry do whatever the heck they do. But that's the direction it FEELS like it's going in.
Only 4000 more that are really worth telling - it's all about where you make that cut. But yes, I've only been going since '92, which does make me a newbie.
GenCon was originally in Lake Geneva (hence the Gen) It was actually held at a Playboy mansion there. I don't know what the official history says, but the real reason it left there was because the Playboy bunnies serving drinks were too distracting and it was too hard to get good gaming done. How's THAT for geeky.
To actually answer your question: As some other posters have said, the main GenCon doesn't move around like a traveling con, but it did permanently move from Milwaukee to Indianapolis a few years.
Lots of oldtimers thought Milwaukee was a much cooler place, but Indy does have much more hotel space. In my opinion GenCon at this time definitely got less COOL, but more ACCESSIBLE. Lots more mainstream families came...
The last few years in Milwaukee, for instance, had seen They Might Be Giants and the Violent Femmes play with pretty serious afterparties. Indy was more water-down and family friendly. But I think it was a ton more profitable for the same reason.
We published Starchildren:Velvet Generation The Roleplaying game where Glam Rock Aliens Save the World from Big Brother. Never heard of it? Not surprising:)
www.starchildren.co.uk (yay for sucky web design)
I've been an Exhibitor at GenCon, partied with the "Gaming Mogul" a couple times met the founder of TSR and lots of other similar geeky goodness. We also threw a few crazy parties - one at the Safehouse and an afterhours party in the lobby of the Westin attended by about 40 people at 3AM.
Here in the US, as far as I can tell, the only skill they test is "can drive legally under nearly ideal street conditions" not "has any skill at actually driving"
Often it involves driving around fairly quiet streets; if you successfully don't do anything illegal you pass. If you DO do something illegal you have to come back and try again.
That I recall, no tests of actual _driving_ skill are made. I'd love them to require a plastic-cone slolom (sp?), cornering at speed, emergency braking on a partially slick surface etc. (I'm not suggesting these need to be tested at 70mph - more like 30mph.)
This is exacerbated by the poor state of Driver's Education. In my moderately affluent suburb this was almost entirely taught by the brain-dead Physical Education teachers who on multiple occasions gave us pretty patently wrong advice.
Keeping with most mainstream education here they have generally reduced the tendency to fail on the basis of "merely" not being competent at the material.
Naturally, I therefore know a lot of drivers who should never have been issued a driver's license.
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I like your cooking analogy, but there's one thing missing:
One thing I can't stress enough to people is that programming is all DESIGN/ARCHITECTURE. The "do" part is essentially instantaneous. You figure out how to do something and write it down, in every minute detail (in code) and it's basically done. Then you compile it (or not even for some things). This process is nearly instantaneous (perhaps minutes but never days for almost any project, and never something you need to do yourself...)
To expand your cooking analogy, it would be like you work really hard on these recipies, but whenever you want you can "zap" create a new set of dishes. (Except that then you have to taste them all again to make sure your changes are ok..)
This is fundamentally different from the construction of anything else ever in my opinion. Code is akin to a recipe or blueprint. The "compile" part of programming, which takes zero work on the part of the programmer, replaces what is one of the longest and most costly parts of developing anything else.
Furthermore, it replaces the only part that you can reliably predict the duration of - making it very, very difficult to predict how long it will take to develop a piece of software.
I think it's important to realize that this makes software much faster to develop - if less predictable - but therefore we develop much more complex things in software. So to borrow from another analogy I saw here - because we don't have to physically build them, the expectation when building a car is that it'll have every feature of any car, boat, bicycle or plane that ever existed.
(The other important ramification is that it never saves developer time to remove an existing feature - and in an agile development process it may take more time to DECIDE whether a feature is important than it would have to simply implement it.
1. You've confused criminal actions, civil liability and theft of services.
2. The process of being out of BSA compliance is hugely worse than even a substantial penalty for anything you might not have bought. They basically shut you down EVEN IF YOU ARE IN COMPLIANCE. All it takes in an unhappy employee making a phone call...
First off, out of compliance does NOT mean you have more installations than you paid for copies of. It means you have more installations that you can instantly produce proof of. Which is NOT the same thing. You have to prove that your innocent, on demand, whenever they decide to come knocking.
I don't know about that place in particular, but many places of this scale might, for instance buy all their PCs from Dell et all and pay the Windows tax on all of them at ship time. If they never upgrade to a new major OS version (buying new PCs faster than they get around to upgrading new ones) they have never, ever needed to buy an OS license.
However, if they lose one COA they are STILL out of compliance - even though they paid for every single license.
So: A) It's not criminal anyway - it's only civil liability. If it was criminal the burden of proof would be on THEM to prove you did it.
B) Even though the civil burden of guilt is lighter, the burden of proof is never supposed to be firmly on you to prove your innocent. Their EULA requires not only that you DID buy the software but that you can prove your innocence on demand. IANAL, but I don't think this would hold up if SCOTUS
ever got around to hearing it. But someone would have to have a zillion $ to fight M$ that long.
2. They basically come take all your computers away and shut down your business indefinitely. That's massively different than charging you - even charging you 100x for any missing licenses. And EVEN IF THEY'RE WRONG they do nothing to compensate you for this lost time. And you can't sue them for it, because the BSA has no assets themselves, supposedly - or not assets enough to sustain the legal fees for a big court case.
There are all kinds of teams like this. Mercenary teams, teams constructed on-the-fly of freelancers, teams leftover from somebody else's emergency project, teams that are slices of bigger companies. We reply to projects on such sites - particularly guru.com. We're probably too busy, and possibly too small, but contact me if you like. You didn't specify what kind of development or platform you're targeting; that makes a difference, too.
/. posts and get convinced I have the perfect attitude, you have no way to know whether I really know my stuff. All of the normal HR stuff applies - resumes, references, portfolios. But it's still hard to tell.
The big problem you have is you can't trust anyone. Even if you read all my
Personally, I don't trust companies nearly as much as I trust individuals. So regardless of the company size, I wouldn't hire a team unless I trust someone who is in a position of authority.
If you don't have the time or money to do a recruiting cycle, you don't really have the time or money to get your project done. The steps you need to do to ensure that you have chosen a talented and professional team are the same ones you would need to do to individuals - and you should probably do it to all of the individuals. And they'll need to gel with your existing developer; you're not going to save much.
Regarding the article, they are only scanned books from before 1923 - for which the copyright has expired. Copyright USED to expire - the whole point of both copyrights and patents was that they grant the author a SHORT period of exclusivity to encourage creation.
But that's not true anymore. Currently copyrights have an expiration date, but the expiration date has consistently gotten farther away faster than it has gotten closer.
Essentially NOTHING expires now unless somebody didn't do their paperwork.
That is, our Congress - with heavy contributions of the media lobby and sometimes with laws actually written by them - extends copyright by more years than have gone by since the last time they did it.
This is RETROACTIVELY true, in clear opposition to the intent of copyright law. (Any works already created are CLEARLY not encouraged by the extension of their copyright)
This is one of the best examples of our need to take back our government and elect officials who care about citizens. Personally I believe intensive campaign finance reform is the only solution.
I believe there was an incident a couple years ago where the South Pole DOCTOR needed surgury. Possibly to remove a cancerous tumor or something. So they were having someone not an MD perform surgury.
I am not a lawyer, but I think you're violating the GPL. Under the current GPL I think this assumes you're actually SELLING the custom devices - not, for instance, renting them out.
Please note that you don't have to let your entire application be available for download, just the modified GPL parts. Most of the good bits of Linux Tivo don't have available source code, and that's ok.
Also, it doesn't specifically have to be download or totally free - offering to mail CDs for a small fee is acceptable. But if they're expensive _enough_ someone will buy one copy of the source and then offer copies - of those free parts - themselves, and that's legal.
My biggest advice is don't move into the contracting world until you have clients. Try to get some relationships doing afterhours work, and or try to land at least one big ongoing contracting gig without enough lead time to quit your job when you get it.
When you can't possibly keep up with the work is when you should quit your day job, and you probably won't have either enough work or money at that point.
Expect that you'll spend a lot of time self-marketing and that it may take a long time to substantially add to your number of clients.
The taxes are a bit worse on paper - because you're paying stuff that previously your employer never showed you. But also bear in mind that you need to pay attention to estimated taxes; it is a lot easier to feel afloat before that.
In most US theaters you're not supposed to take anything in but they aren't at all effective at checking you.
At the root of this is profiteering. But the other cause is US Health Codes and insurance, which generally prohibit places from selling food and letting you eat your own food.
But at some theaters they have all manner of different rules. Some are expensive and serve fine cuisine and wine at your seat. Some are beer-based "Brew&View" theaters. Some of these sell liquor, some just let you bring whatever you want. There are definitely some small inexpensive theaters that let you bring whatever you want. Often they either don't have their own concessions or the concessions are somewhat separate from the theater.
Fine, I'll clarify and agree:
IF you are a worst-case environmental offender with your lawn, and the legal, economic or social situation hasn't yet evolved a way to get you to behave in a way that is substantially less harmful to the environment, plastic grass might be be less harmful to it than your terrible behavior with the real grass.
Did I inappropriately summarize your point in some way?
But I still sustain that if you're discussing making the situation really better you shouldn't overlook the much better solutions in favor of the slightly better one.
Anyone putting in fake grass BECAUSE it is good for the environment is not doing the right thing for the environment.
Your argument is essentially that you're better off to buy a car with slightly better gas mileage since you're driving 50,000 miles a year. My argument is that for most people there is no need to drive those 50,000 miles, and cutting down on it is more important. In most cases it IS better to own an SUV than to routinely have to make multiple trips with a smaller car... if you actually need that much space. (And, if so you should probably get a van or minivan instead of an SUV...)
Just because some people excessively fertilize and water doesn't mean you have to do it. And it really does matter what breed of grass you use for where you are. If you want to be good for the environment find green ways to keep your lawn green - or don't do it and do something else.
Our recycling of some types of plastic is fine, but most of them amount to "we chop it up and there are a very few things we can make out of it" It is much more likely to just be landfilled than aluminum.
That some rare freaks use 240 gallons of water a day doesn't surprise me - that doesn't mean they're a good standard for being enviromentally friendly.
You ignored me, but I wasn't kidding about the watering not being that bad in lots of places... basically anywhere that gets their water from a nearby stationary source - if it rains someitmes and you're near a lake, it's probably not a big deal* because it rapidly returns to its natural cycle.
On the other hand, if you're piping water thousands of miles from a mountain-fed river into a desert, you shouldn't have a lawn - you live in a freakin' desert. That water is not going to return to its natural place anytime soon, if at all.
*Of course, there is some energy cost involved in processing the water before it got to your lawn and then getting it there. Since it doesn't need to be potable, you'd be even better off to pump it from a local source directly onto your lawn without processing.
GnuCash supports OSX. Installation is a slight pain, but it is what we're using. YMMV, of course.
I have a bridge I'd like to sell you over Lake Pontchartrain.
In general, fake grass is not better for the environment by any stretch of the imagination.
1. Made from plastic, from oil.
2. Plants make oxygen.
3. Grass doesn't require fertilizer, and watering usually doesn't hurt.
To clarify: use plants appropriate to your climate. If you live in a desert, using real OR fake grass is bad for the environment.
If you live somewhere it actually rains, most of the time moderate watering grass ISN'T bad for the environment, because that water goes back into the environment - largely as immediate humidity. And you only need moderate watering if you use the right plants.
I'm sure you've gotten a lot of good answers, especially ones about a lot of details (lighting, refresh rates etc) So I'm only going to talk about things where I think I can add something special, but I've thought quite a lot about some of these. Everyone please critque my ideas; some of these are changes I plan on making.
I completely agree about screen real estate. I'm a developer, I use 2 21" monitors and 1 or two laptops simultaneously - and there are times that more realestate would speed me up. I think this is the single most important speed aid, as long as your computers can reasonable handle what you need to do.
Decide on a machine to be your server and give it all the files. Make sure it is backed up regularly and make any other machines share from it. (This could also be your main workstation, but it doesn't have to be)
Currently I have one monitor on a KVM and one monitor on a V switch. This leaves me with a moderately manageable 2 keyboards and mice. My primary computer (dedicated KM) has left as its primary and my secondard computer has right as its primary - fairly often I use them one each. I'm also using 4 port switches, so I can have several other computers running if I'm doing hardware work or some such.
However, I don't think this setup is truly optimal. In my next revision the primary responsibility of my main desktop will be to run many monitors and many windows with VNC. The VNC model gives you fine-grained control over what windows go where and lets you easily copy and paste between them. It also lets you quickly and without virtualization overhead run in a variety of environments - and as a bonus it lets you reap some benefits of a pseudocluster. With all the files on a server you could utilize several machines to do whichever work is convenient.
As a bonus, this lets you resist the urge to have 30 machines under your desk, which is bad for noise, heat etc. You can keep those 30 machines whereever you can stretch ethernet : )
I'd like to mention Serenity, a desktop-sharing application. (I haven't gotten around to using it yet, but it is well-reviewed) It bills itself as a software KVM, and I'm sure it does that (except that before I install it I'll skip to VNC.) But it lets you do something no hardware KVM can - drag the mouse right from one desktop onto another (along with clipboard support) I see no point for monitors you always use together, but if sometimes your friend is going to borrow a computer and monitor you'd otherwise use this is excellent. Similarly, it's a great model for sitting that laptop next to your desktop.
Finally, all my reading is that sitting sucks. Try to find any other way to be. Standing, laying etc. I believe that with a split keyboard (where left and right halves come totally apart) you could pretty easily and effectively code laying down.
I completely agree that you're going to need to learn how to run Linux before you run Linux, but there are things you should do WHILE you are learning Linux:
/net install so it works for all users, and change the default file formats to the MSOfc ones in the configuration.
/. vastly more experienced than I am, I'm a professional technologist and have repeatedly executed this transition.
0. Linux is a perfect OS for your server, but consider strongly whether you really want Linux for your workstations or you really want OSX. OSX provides a vastly superior interface for untrained users and generally supports most Linux software and a very large amount of professional software that Linux doesn't. If you're going to go with Linux, though...
1. First install Firefox and OpenOffice on everyone's Windows machine. For OOo make sure you do the
2. Get them used to Firefox. It's generally superior to IE, but the real reason to force it is better (but not perfect) security. Immediately convert their bookmarks and the default browser to Firefox; hide the obvious shortcuts to IE. Warn them that IE may be disabled.
3. Then get them used to OOo instead of MSOfc. This is likely your biggest cost savings; new workstations usually ship with the Windows tax anyway.
4. Find out what other applications they use, find out if there is a Linux version, an OSS equivalent, or if it runs in WINE. You are never going to transition anybody's workstation until they can perform all of their work functions in the new OS. This is going to take considerable time to indentify and solve.
5. Transition the server(s) to Linux on your next server upgrade. With the effectiveness of Samba, transferring your workstations and your server to Linux are mostly independent actions, but I highly recommend changing the server first.
6. After the server is settled, transition SOME workstations - starting with the ones you've settled point #4 on most completely. There WILL be problems, so don't migrate the whole office immediately. Most users, familiar with Windows, will be less happy with Linux than with Windows.
While I'm sure there are people on
I highly recommend SuSE for someone in your position; it is a powerful Linux installation but also has Windows-style dialogs for all the configurations. While I'm sure there will be zealots for other flavors, I've found their configuration to be more straightforward and functional than the competition.
You don't need carte blanche, but you do need explicit approval for all the things you do. Preferably in writing and/or email.
First, write a letter to your boss.
List everything horrible going on clearly describe how your organization is standing in a minefield of security concerns and how the vulnerabilities present in IE, Windows, patching, firewalls etc. Point out how this will cause sudden unwarranted emergency problems. You can predict these problems, but you can't predict WHEN they will happen.
It is up to your boss, not you, to decide whether you should make unpopular decisions that prevent problems or you should just let things ride. Preferably publicly.
But if they decide to let it ride make sure they feel the pain of the problems when they do happen. If you are too good at cleaning up the mess they'll never see the point of fixing anything.
(Generally you don't want your boss to be making prioritization decisions about which stuff you should do first - you just want to paint it in simple terms: The teachers like some things, but they are going to blow up. I can fix it and make them unhappy now or it can blow up later and nothing will work.)
Second, get used to incremental changes and ride the wave of any problems. Basically, if a computer has any kind of problems it should get fixed with whatever else it needs and a firewall and Firefox renamed "Internet" "WWW" or "Interweb" - and IE should be missing from the desktop and all easy places in the start menu.
Don't ever publicize that you're making something a "mandate" - mandates are very unpopular and clearly they won't understand the rationale. Just make it part of fixing whatever problems someone had as you go along... If you showed up because THEY called YOU they have are less likely to be upset that you had to change things, because it isn't "for no reason".
Other points:
Try to get a student assistant. There's probably some very talented free labor available.
Samba is great for your servers; OSX is overkill on the basic fileserver side and is more expensive. But OSX workstations and Samba servers work great together. OSX is NOT easier to use for someone used to Windows, but it IS easier to use for someone not used to computers at all.
I disagree with one of the other posters - the machines won't fail from water on the floor if it isn't on the machines; for even extreme seepage just put a bunch of wood under the machines. Similarly, backup power isn't your biggest concern (although redundant HDs should be) - you likely don't need to keep operating computers when the power is out.
These days with reasonable settings outlook isn't usually as dangerous as IE and the free alternatives to outlook aren't as superior as Firefox; I'd definitely start there.
Almost all laptops already come with multivoltage. In a small survey of a dozen or so I couldn't find one that didn't. Mostly the power bricks are rated for 50-60 Hz 100-240V - which covers everything commonly on the planet. Voltage conversion is the expensive electronic part of international power.
Then all you need is a _plug_ converter - that is, a piece of metal and plastic that makes it fit in the right holes. These are very cheap. For instance, a european/israeli plug is $0.99 from Bombay Electronics (online and on Devon in Chicago) The "international voltage kits" for laptops are usually just a bunch of of plugs/cables that have different ends, but don't pay too much.
Laptop makers ship the exact same converter with different ends everywhere in the world - that's how it works. Many of them have a removeable cord for the "to the wall" part - then they just use different cords. But you definitely don't need a "special" kit for most laptops.
Except the print carts that come with printers are usually even smaller and less full than the default retail ones - 50% or 25% as full.
I do honestly think your plan is sometimes a good deal, but it is hardly at the ratios your post suggests.
In addition, you haven't accounted for the time value of money (ie, interest you would have earned on $43 for several months) or the value of your time for processing the rebate or engaging in so many sales. You also have to account for the fact that sometimes the rebate companies will defraud you, at a mimimum taking additional time and money.
A lot of restaurants and many hotels preauthorize the maximum likely amount instead of the current total.
For instance, the excellent and incredible Safehouse Milwaukee authorizes 20% over your dinner bill. Then they actually charge whatever you pay for tip. Since the bill for dinner and drinks for a dozen people was substantial but we had paid the tip in cash, we noticed the increased amount of the preauthorization.
I've heard for a long time that servers prefer cash - which I think is true for tax and management purposes. But I've heard the reverse from some servers - due to theft from other servers and bussing staff. At least with a card they always get SOME of the tip.
I try to tip with cash and make sure to hand the payment + tip directly to the server.
Personally I think credit receipts with tip ought to print the maximum preauthorized amount (bill + 20-25%), the payment processors should refuse tip amounts higher than the preauth and to leave a higher tip you should either ask for a receipt with tip included or one with a higher preauth amount - and you should have to do it before they swipe your card. (or have them reswipe your card)
Toxoplamsa Gondii (that cat thing) is much worse than you think. The CDC alone has quite a bit of information, but it's not well organized. (Google +site:cdc.gov)
For instance: Humans can get it by eating infected meat, but ALSO by inhaling spores from infected cat feces. Be concerned about cleaning that litterbox! Common medical practice is only concerned with cases when the initial acute infection is especially severe, which is common in pregnancy (the fetus is vulnerable to death)
But the disease persists in the mammal brain even in asympomatic adults. And it has a noteable correlation with schizophrenia.
This is all from the CDC website, but from various different pages and studies.
I have a lot of respect for teachers. I think that on the whole they try hard despite being inadequately trained, paid, supplied and supported.
But that doesn't mean that school isn't babysitting. Most of the way schools are funded are about keeping students in seats for numbers of hours. The beauracracy is designed with that as the primary goal and learning as the secondary - or worse - goal. Frankly, the teachers have no control over this and the administrator of a given district doesn't have that much either.
And the resistance to change at all levels is tremendous.
There are several scientfically validated reasonably well-known systems that provide much better results in terms of learning - Precision Teaching is my favorite example.
PT has been implemented in many existing schools. Universally it gives improved results on whatever metrics you choose to measure it with. And fairly universally the answer has been to dismantle the PT structure because it made the previous way look so bad.
Morningside Academy, Ben Bronz Academy and the Judge Rotenburg Center all use principles of PT, and all of them take "slow" learners who are unsuccessful in mainstream public systems and not only have them keep up but usually actually _catch up_ to their mainstream peers. JRC also deals with extraordinarily severe behavioral issues.
The fact that it is possible for this catching up to routinely happens is clear evidence that we are doing our mainstream students a great disservice.
Here's what I've learned: Home support from anybody I've tried - Dell included - is really bad.
Dell Small Business support answers the phone promptly and is quite helpful. Probably a half-dozen issues, all resolved great. The last was probably a year ago.
Next-day onsite warranty support because a clients desktop CD-ROM drive was too loud. I didn't even have to go there, and I spent about 10 min on the phone total.
I tell everybody to buy their Dell from the Small Business division - the only differences are the packages and the support. The price is usually less. Applies to refurbs too - as long as they are Small Business refurbs.
It's all about Thrust (I think this was clearly explained in Chicken Run : )
Someone - Tesla, I believe - thought that flight would never be safe until we had greater than 1:1 thrust to weight ratios. For an airplane this means you can do a tailstand, accelerate, and fly upward.
While many modern fighter jets can accomplish this, it turns out he was being overconservative.
For a biological organism, this is easiest with tiny things - Dragonflys are a great example of agile, multidirectional flight.
For manmade aircraft the reverse is true - it's easier for us to deal with the overhead of the machine the larger it is.
Modern fixed wing aircraft are very good at getting the most lift possible for a given amount of engine. Birds aren't a great example of high engine power to lift wings - but a bird would be pretty useless at flying if it could only takeoff and land on a nice smooth, long runway.
So in my opinion we're finally getting enough excess power in fairly small machines to do things that are power-inefficient with the wings. Having fast, cheap microcontrollers helps a lot too.
I understand, sortof. On the one hand I completely agree that you have to look to the future - but there were quite a few kids in at the recent GenCons in Milwaukee too.
It's been mainstreamed and filtered. Like anything else, the REASON you do that is because more people will like it just enough rather than fewer people really loving it.
Essentially you used to find 80 things you loved and 20 you hated, now you find 8 you love, 2 you hate and 90 you sortof like. Which is better, sortof.
But relatively speaking it's more like TOP40 radio now and less like Indie. (Okay, it's not as bad as Payola radio, but that's the kind of DIRECTION I'm talking about)
And clearly there are exceptions - it isn't a monoculture, so people that make up the GenCon tapestry do whatever the heck they do. But that's the direction it FEELS like it's going in.
Only 4000 more that are really worth telling - it's all about where you make that cut. But yes, I've only been going since '92, which does make me a newbie.
GenCon was originally in Lake Geneva (hence the Gen) It was actually held at a Playboy mansion there. I don't know what the official history says, but the real reason it left there was because the Playboy bunnies serving drinks were too distracting and it was too hard to get good gaming done. How's THAT for geeky.
:)
To actually answer your question: As some other posters have said, the main GenCon doesn't move around like a traveling con, but it did permanently move from Milwaukee to Indianapolis a few years.
Lots of oldtimers thought Milwaukee was a much cooler place, but Indy does have much more hotel space. In my opinion GenCon at this time definitely got less COOL, but more ACCESSIBLE. Lots more mainstream families came...
The last few years in Milwaukee, for instance, had seen They Might Be Giants and the Violent Femmes play with pretty serious afterparties. Indy was more water-down and family friendly. But I think it was a ton more profitable for the same reason.
We published Starchildren:Velvet Generation The Roleplaying game where Glam Rock Aliens Save the World from Big Brother. Never heard of it? Not surprising
www.starchildren.co.uk (yay for sucky web design)
I've been an Exhibitor at GenCon, partied with the "Gaming Mogul" a couple times met the founder of TSR and lots of other similar geeky goodness. We also threw a few crazy parties - one at the Safehouse and an afterhours party in the lobby of the Westin attended by about 40 people at 3AM.
There's about 4000 more stories, of course.
Here in the US, as far as I can tell, the only skill they test is "can drive legally under nearly ideal street conditions" not "has any skill at actually driving"
Often it involves driving around fairly quiet streets; if you successfully don't do anything illegal you pass. If you DO do something illegal you have to come back and try again.
That I recall, no tests of actual _driving_ skill are made. I'd love them to require a plastic-cone slolom (sp?), cornering at speed, emergency braking on a partially slick surface etc. (I'm not suggesting these need to be tested at 70mph - more like 30mph.)
This is exacerbated by the poor state of Driver's Education. In my moderately affluent suburb this was almost entirely taught by the brain-dead Physical Education teachers who on multiple occasions gave us pretty patently wrong advice.
Keeping with most mainstream education here they have generally reduced the tendency to fail on the basis of "merely" not being competent at the material.
Naturally, I therefore know a lot of drivers who should never have been issued a driver's license.