Massachusetts libraries have a subscription to netLibrary, which includes a huge number of O'Reilly and Addison Wesley books. Subscribers are able to "check out" a copy or browse it online.
This eliminates the shelf life problem, and a subscription might allow access to more books for the same cost. It could provide the current manuals for the library, while you provide hard copies of classics and histories.
It's been an invaluable way to browse through O'Reilly books and determine whether I really need a copy of my own.
I recommend a combination of meat broker and online sites.
Best sites:
ZipRealty.com -- for saved searches and search result display format
Domania.com -- for looking up the sale history of the house, neighborhood, etc.
Realtor.com -- has description with room dimensions. You can get the MLS # from ZipRealty, then do a lookup on Realtor.
local paper -- for their mortgage comparison chart, updated daily
These were invaluable not only for suggesting things to see, but letting me figure out what I DON'T want to see, and getting a good sense of what a house goes for in a particular town.
I wish these sites allowed a more sophisticated search, though, like "where TYPE is NOT RANCH and NOT MULTI". They clogged up my result set.
Worst part:
The online maps. After you drive around a town enough, you know the chunks where you don't want to live. It's very hard to get a good Big Picture from Yahoo maps. Get an atlas. Do drive-bys.
A buyer's broker sounded weird the first time I heard of it, but let's face it: the seller is going to pay a 5% commission, and it will either get split between the listing broker and the showing broker, or be kept entirely by the listing broker. It might as well be shared with someone who works for you. Many brokers have an MLS site that will send you daily e-mails on new search results.
I did all the footwork for finding a house, but she helped with negotiating, calling the fire department to check for buried oil tanks, recommending home inspectors (who don't work for the selling broker), recommending a floor refinisher, etc.
The drawback to online searches is they hit the web a few days after houses go on the market. Live brokers may know about them before the MLS listing goes out, and can show them before the world learns they're available. I just saw a "new" listing on zipRealty that I saw in person two weeks ago.
You can leave your contact info with listing brokers in your target area, and say you're working with a buyers broker but would appreciate hearing about anything their agency lists that fits the bill. We got calls on some nice houses a selling broker was listing that way.
Best technique for handling selling brokers:
One of you asks questions about schools, neighborhood, etc. while the other gets a good look at the electrical box or condition of the roof.
I've noticed that folks who work the regular 9-5 assume that if they're not there, you're not there either. If you show up at 11, you must not be pulling your weight, because they don't SEE you there till 7pm. Or 9pm. Or midnight.
You can read Lockard's essay, or some earlier permutation of it, for yourself.
Lockard addresses several ideals about online communities. Some of these pertain to whether the Internet will be the Great Leveler, producing a classless, commonly-owned, universally accessible forum for communication. Lockard says this is false.
Fair enough. The Internet is not free. Getting connected requires owning or accessing a certain amount of equipment, having a certain amount of free time to spend online rather than working, a certain level of technical skill, and basic literacy. The same could be said for living in Wellesly, Andover, Concord, or any of the other upscale physical communities surrounding Boston. The median household yearly income in Massachusetts is about $29K; the average asessed tax value of houses in Concord is around $394K. This is not inclusive. I wouldn't call them diverse communities, either.
"Cybericity does not replicate material communities in a parallel world where we can reformulate communality." I also agree with this. I don't use the Internet to get closer to my physical community. I use it to get information about it. For instance:
The Internet does as much for physical community building as the phone book: I go there to find information, which might lead me to go out in my neighborhood. It doesn't create social relationships by itself. I have to go interact.
Why should online communities mirror geographical ones? Yes, it's important to participate in my geographic community, and it would be swell if folks used the Internet to strengthen participation. This isn't the benchmark for whether something constitutes a community.
Community is a social process. Lockard is correct that it is more than a mere "electronic affinity group". There are websites I check frequently, like Slashdot or the Boston Globe, and then there are communities I belong to. The distinction is whether one treats the site as a source of information or as a group of people whose input you want.
For instance, I've run a mailing list for women martial artists for about four years. Some posts are for information, like "how do I train after knee surgery", and are posted because someone out there has that information. Others are for feedback ("I'm facing this situation, what's your take on it") or just social ("wish me luck on my belt test"), because the poster wants to talk about it with her peers. That transformation from information source to peer is what makes it a community.
So, in summary, Lockard is right that the Internet is not a panacea to the inequities we see in society, nor is it revitalizing involvement in our neighborhoods, though it does contain some elements of that. He is incorrect that a community requires a physical presence.
On a tangent, I've been pondering over what conditions foster community. Some factors are:
Participants building up individual identities. You know who you're talking to.
High signal to noise ratio.
A magic number of posts -- too many drives people away; too few is just an announcement list.
Enough of a focus that you have something to talk about. I've seen very general lists, like "This is a list for the town of X" on eGroups, that fizzle out for lack of something to say.
A few alpha-posters that invest time into high-quality posts.
The Big U is a parody of Boston University. With the Massachusetts turnpike roaring behind Warren Towers, I can see the parallel.
When I got my copy of Cryptonomicon signed at a reading, I mentioned I'd finally found a copy of The Big U. Stephenson didn't say anything negative, but seemed distinctly underwhelmed by the subject. The smile disappeared.
I enjoy the Big U for nostalgia. I first read it when I went to UMass Amherst, home of ~26,000 students, and The Big U was funny, comforting, and dead on about life at a large university.
What they DON'T much want anymore are MID-LIST writers. Quirky scribblers. Ones with faithful but not mammoth audiences. Ones difficult to sum up to a salesman in Paducah with a one-sentence soundbite. Ones PEOPLE magazine isn't talking about. Ones whose books haven't been a hit movie yet. Ones whose works not only reward, but REQUIRE a high-school education and some imagination.
Robinson notes in his followup that many other midlist author are encountering the same thing.
I don't want to live in a five-second-summary world.
That makes this Nerdworthy.
So here's a little support for a midlist author. The Connection on WBUR posts RealAudio files of their broadcasts. Shows are posted as soon as the broadcast is finished, and stay up for one week. Katz' interview should go up at 11AM on 3/16/99 and stay until 11AM on 3/23.
( Someone at The Connection must read/. . They've been doing shows about Linux, RMS, and Open Source, which is quite out of character for the Cambridge literati-type host.)
I haven't read Katz' book yet (and might not; the Salon review was pretty harsh), but it did lead me to pick up Thomas Merton's own book "Running to the Mountain". Katz has done me the service of pointing out an author I might never have read otherwise.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, if they won't read the admin posts they're not going to read a whole book.
--tangram
Add a mirror. It makes your cubicle look bigger, is almost as if you have a window, and lets you see who's sneaking up behind you with a nerf gun.
--tangram
Massachusetts libraries have a subscription to netLibrary, which includes a huge number of O'Reilly and Addison Wesley books. Subscribers are able to "check out" a copy or browse it online.
This eliminates the shelf life problem, and a subscription might allow access to more books for the same cost. It could provide the current manuals for the library, while you provide hard copies of classics and histories.
It's been an invaluable way to browse through O'Reilly books and determine whether I really need a copy of my own.
--tangram
I recommend a combination of meat broker and online sites.
Best sites:
ZipRealty.com -- for saved searches and search result display format
Domania.com -- for looking up the sale history of the house, neighborhood, etc.
Realtor.com -- has description with room dimensions. You can get the MLS # from ZipRealty, then do a lookup on Realtor.
local paper -- for their mortgage comparison chart, updated daily
These were invaluable not only for suggesting things to see, but letting me figure out what I DON'T want to see, and getting a good sense of what a house goes for in a particular town.
I wish these sites allowed a more sophisticated search, though, like "where TYPE is NOT RANCH and NOT MULTI". They clogged up my result set.
Worst part:
The online maps. After you drive around a town enough, you know the chunks where you don't want to live. It's very hard to get a good Big Picture from Yahoo maps. Get an atlas. Do drive-bys.
A buyer's broker sounded weird the first time I heard of it, but let's face it: the seller is going to pay a 5% commission, and it will either get split between the listing broker and the showing broker, or be kept entirely by the listing broker. It might as well be shared with someone who works for you. Many brokers have an MLS site that will send you daily e-mails on new search results.
I did all the footwork for finding a house, but she helped with negotiating, calling the fire department to check for buried oil tanks, recommending home inspectors (who don't work for the selling broker), recommending a floor refinisher, etc.
The drawback to online searches is they hit the web a few days after houses go on the market. Live brokers may know about them before the MLS listing goes out, and can show them before the world learns they're available. I just saw a "new" listing on zipRealty that I saw in person two weeks ago.
You can leave your contact info with listing brokers in your target area, and say you're working with a buyers broker but would appreciate hearing about anything their agency lists that fits the bill. We got calls on some nice houses a selling broker was listing that way.
Best technique for handling selling brokers:
One of you asks questions about schools, neighborhood, etc. while the other gets a good look at the electrical box or condition of the roof.
Happy hunting-
--tangram
I've noticed that folks who work the regular 9-5 assume that if they're not there, you're not there either. If you show up at 11, you must not be pulling your weight, because they don't SEE you there till 7pm. Or 9pm. Or midnight.
Anyone got suggestions for coping with this?
tangram
Lockard addresses several ideals about online communities. Some of these pertain to whether the Internet will be the Great Leveler, producing a classless, commonly-owned, universally accessible forum for communication. Lockard says this is false.
Fair enough. The Internet is not free. Getting connected requires owning or accessing a certain amount of equipment, having a certain amount of free time to spend online rather than working, a certain level of technical skill, and basic literacy. The same could be said for living in Wellesly, Andover, Concord, or any of the other upscale physical communities surrounding Boston. The median household yearly income in Massachusetts is about $29K; the average asessed tax value of houses in Concord is around $394K. This is not inclusive. I wouldn't call them diverse communities, either.
"Cybericity does not replicate material communities in a parallel world where we can reformulate communality." I also agree with this. I don't use the Internet to get closer to my physical community. I use it to get information about it. For instance:
The Internet does as much for physical community building as the phone book: I go there to find information, which might lead me to go out in my neighborhood. It doesn't create social relationships by itself. I have to go interact.
Why should online communities mirror geographical ones? Yes, it's important to participate in my geographic community, and it would be swell if folks used the Internet to strengthen participation. This isn't the benchmark for whether something constitutes a community.
Community is a social process. Lockard is correct that it is more than a mere "electronic affinity group". There are websites I check frequently, like Slashdot or the Boston Globe, and then there are communities I belong to. The distinction is whether one treats the site as a source of information or as a group of people whose input you want.
For instance, I've run a mailing list for women martial artists for about four years. Some posts are for information, like "how do I train after knee surgery", and are posted because someone out there has that information. Others are for feedback ("I'm facing this situation, what's your take on it") or just social ("wish me luck on my belt test"), because the poster wants to talk about it with her peers. That transformation from information source to peer is what makes it a community.
So, in summary, Lockard is right that the Internet is not a panacea to the inequities we see in society, nor is it revitalizing involvement in our neighborhoods, though it does contain some elements of that. He is incorrect that a community requires a physical presence.
On a tangent, I've been pondering over what conditions foster community. Some factors are:
Any thoughts on this?
--tangram
This is a marvelous chance to point out:
There's a GI Joe Navajo Code Talker action figure out now, with seven recorded messages in Navajo and english. Get 'em while they last.
( If this is successful, maybe they'll come out with the Alan Turing action figure. Or Lady Lovelace with Camper and Grappling Hook.)
--tangram
See:
The Nuts and Bolts of Compiling and Running JavaSpacesTM Programs by Susanne Hupfer.
Their instructions worked, but it wasn't always clear what had to be named exactly as in the examples.
They've also posted errata at the book's site.
Regards,
--tangram
A door for my cubicle.
--tangram
The Big U is a parody of Boston University. With the Massachusetts turnpike roaring behind Warren Towers, I can see the parallel.
When I got my copy of Cryptonomicon signed at a reading, I mentioned I'd finally found a copy of The Big U. Stephenson didn't say anything negative, but seemed distinctly underwhelmed by the subject. The smile disappeared.
I enjoy the Big U for nostalgia. I first read it when I went to UMass Amherst, home of ~26,000 students, and The Big U was funny, comforting, and dead on about life at a large university.
Tangram
I don't want to live in a five-second-summary world.
That makes this Nerdworthy.
So here's a little support for a midlist author. The Connection on WBUR posts RealAudio files of their broadcasts. Shows are posted as soon as the broadcast is finished, and stay up for one week. Katz' interview should go up at 11AM on 3/16/99 and stay until 11AM on 3/23.
( Someone at The Connection must read
I haven't read Katz' book yet (and might not; the Salon review was pretty harsh), but it did lead me to pick up Thomas Merton's own book "Running to the Mountain". Katz has done me the service of pointing out an author I might never have read otherwise.