> So maybe the question shouldn't have > been, "what do you do for insurance," but "how > do you get good, quality, comprehensive > healthcare in the United States as a self- > employed person"?
Unless you're as filthy rich as Bill or Larry, you don't.
> Verizon is a public corporation. It answers to > its shareholders, who's only concern is profit.
uh huh. Would you like a Black Rocket with that, too? VZ is big enough that at times different parts are doing different things, some of them things that clearly don't benefit the shareholders and may disagree with things that other parts of the company are doing. It's what happens when you have a 200,000+ person company.
Dr. E.E. Smith the 6 book Lensman Series (Triplanetary, First Lensman, Grey Lensman, Second Stage Lensman, Children of the Lens, Galatic Patrol). Another book by him worthy of note is the Skylark of Space. All of his writing is before 1950... but still worthy it.
I'd also suggest Katherine Kerr's Deverry Series. (yes I know it crosses the line into Fantasy, but it does it in a way that you can almost believe it's Speculative Fiction) I'd give the titles but I've got the British Copies which have different ones that the ones in the states.
Simon Green's Deathstalker Universe is another good one to dig into... 6 or 7 books these days centering around the life and adventures of Owen Deathstalker.
The right solution is not to pick the latest technology "buzzword". While it may challenge you, that's the not the point of the job. (you want challenge go get a PhD.)
It doesn't matter what technology you pick, the user doesn't care, just so long as it works. It matters in how quickly it allows you to get a product out the door that people are going to buy....
take the unicode example offered...
Let's be realistic, the bulk of your sales are likely going to be in the US, Canada, and the EU.
All places you can get by with 8 bit ascii. By the time your package gets to the point where you need Arabic, and Chinese, and Japansese versions, you're likely going to be long gone from the project and stiffs who specialize in that conversion will be making it.
So unless using Unicode reduces your time to market significantly, it doesn't make the company any money, and you should save it for your recreational programming.
Sorry to say this but the idiot in front of you on his cell phone will just find something else to do if you remove it from his use. It's not the cell phone that's the problem, it's his complete lack of moral development.
He doesn't understand that there is anyone else out there besides him. Laws about hands free don't solve the crux issue which is his lack of morals.
He's not thought about and understood consequences of his decisions...or he doesn't care.
I'm going to not talk on my phone because when I become distracted I might kill someone through my reduced reaction time
So while you might solve the preceived issue through legislation... you will not solve the issue which is that people don't think about the consequences of their actions when they are behind the wheel.
For Instance take these examples...
the guy who went flying around the curve on I-95 below Hanscom Field in the inside lane at 85 on my way to work this morning seems to have a similar problem...
Or the Saab who did the four lane sweep out of US3 onto 128...
Or the lady with her kids bouncing around in the back of her minivan on rte 62 yesterday afternoon...
Or the guy I watched eating a burger as we were both going through the Hooksett tolls on Saturday...
or mayhaps the State Trooper on the Pike last thursday who while seeming in no legal rush was flying West from Allston-Brighton at 80+ MPH suspicously close to shift change...
Or mayhaps the owner of the El-Camino with Maine tags I parked next to at Dunkin' Donuts this morning that had bald tires...
Or mayhaps the low riding, detailed out Ford Contour with the stereo pumping out the latest hip-hop jam I had the joy of sitting next to at a light in Woburn a week past on a warm day...
Laws about hands free don't solve the issue that these drivers got their licenses out of cracker jack boxes and obviously didn't learn the potential impact of their actions.
Personally I didn't really realize myself until years after I got my license. I mean I knew it intellectually... and I follow the law... but it did not sink in on that gutt level.
For me the transition from an intellectual knowledge to that gutt knowledge happened when I watched from a house in Castine Maine the Hancock County Mounties scrape a young kid off a guard-rail on Maine Route 166 when he tried to take his bike around a steep curve at 110 while inebriated. People just don't realize till it affects them. I really think we should make it a requirement for kids getting their license to help clean up one traffic accident.
So while cell phones usage while driving may be a great campaign issue for politicians in seach of re-election (calling Swifty). It side steps the real issue which is that many drivers on the road today (and not just those in New England) don't really have a sense of what the impact of some of their preceived minor actions might be, the loss of their lives or even more sadly some innocent bystanders
This article entirely misses the point of VC. VC isn't out for you or your company, they are out for themselves, and if that means they leave a body count behind, it's just part of the business.
the VC's goal in investing is increase his money immensely. Just like a lot of folks had as a goal when they dumped untold millions on Power Ball or the Big Game. Start Ups are VC's version of the lottery, and just like when I lost powerball, both toss the ticket when it's clear it's a looser. (and since these are folks who if they loose a few dollars aren't going to miss a meal, it's little emotional investment for them to toss you and your company)
Just like a loan shark, expect unreasonable demands, exhorbitant interest rates, and an indifference to anything but getting their money back and the expected rate of return... since VC is a little more than legal loan sharking.
As a founder it's in your best interest to be very very clear on this before you sell your soul to the devil. My suggestion for an education is go look up the reference to Mark Twain's Republic of Gonder... walking in assuming these people are interested in anything more than their money is just poor thinking.
you get told in the corporate world to multi-task all the time... it's the quality of a senior engineer...
since it's a good quality you won't mind if I talk on my cell phone while driving? will you? I mean good senior people know how to multi-task, and my last review says right here that I am one...so now what was that number, I need to have a good arguement with...
The French Judge in question can legislate from the bench all he wants. It'll do little good, beyond looking good on his C.V.. Those who want the 'stuff' will get their hands on it, it'll be a little more effort, but still possible. What needs to happen is that French Society (and all Socities) need to be educated. Legislation does not replace education, and in many cases is worse than no legislation at all as it creates a huge and cumbersome bereaucracy...
An Example:
Here in Boston about two years ago a college student at MIT died from drinking too much. (Voluntarily or In-Voluntarily leave for the courts to decide) So our well meaning General Court, and "officials" in Cambridge and Boston, legislated "tougher" standards on under aged drinking. From what I can tell it hasn't changed a thing beyond making a few politicians sleep better at night, and creating a few more pages of laws.
My attitude is that I'm here to manage what's important...
Where I work, we don't officially have flex-time. The employee handbook says it's 8:30am - 5:30pm with an hour for lunch. I don't think many know it's there, and it's not SOP.
SOP here is your here for the core hours of 10 -2, and you work a regular day. (i.e. same hours all the time) I'm generally a 6:30am sort, but another lady in my department just can't get here before 10. (kids and she's not an early riser)
In thinking about running my project I don't want to sit there with a stop watch keeping track of folks. When you get here you leave 8ish hours later. I want to know when to find you (okay it's 9. Sheri's not here for another hour...). Beyond that I really don't give a shit, no offense but I've got better things to do for the company... if you want useless paper and procedure go talk to the union boys down on the floor. (you should see the crap they've got procedures for!)
I feel the same way about dress. Don't really much care what you wear so long as it meets decency standards (no odd parts hanging out). For the lady's this also means that it doesn't create a distraction for the guys (backless sundresses, micro skirts...are a distracting thing). For the guys it means about the same (save the muscle shirts for elsewhere). Most of the folk in my department sit at a computer for a large part of their work days... It's just common decency to allow them to be comfortable as they do that. But the catch is if your offsite or dealing with a customer you will be business casual at a minimum. I suffer through long pants others can too!
Beyond that... my attitude is my job is to get the project done, and your free to do what you need to do to make yourself productive. If what your doing is making you or others unproductive then we will talk. I'm hired to be a project lead, a mother.
I'll admit right off the bat that "where" could be indicative of "who". If you saw something coming from California or Newfoundland you could bet it was not me. But it doesn't say anything about wether or not it really is you.
Those most likely to steal an identity, are not the random person in San Diego or St. John's but someone who knows you well. It's your coworker in the next office, it's your brother who you live with. About all you can do with GPS technology is to tell me which keyboard in question things came from, but that says nothing about what's between the keyboard and the chair.
The first rule of computer security applys with authentication, "The Biggest Security Risk is the user". Until you can phsyically implant the authentication device inside the user AND make it unhackable (an impossibility), there's no guarentees. Because I can just coach someone elese to provide the responses.
I remember one quip I heard once while having some stuff tested at Fort Hauchuca in Arizona...
"Colonel, that machine is secure"
"Son, that machine is only secure if you remove
all cables from the CPU, encase it in cement and
sit a man with a gun on top of it, and even then I'd worry."
same applys with authentication.
The numbers I've seen, though I don't have them in front of me indicate that with a reasonable length rail (like 2 miles) and acceleration at 10G, you
can do it. Remember I'm not advocating putting people in here, merely manufacutered parts and things like grain.
Runway? SSTO? that still misses the key technical lack and why the international space station is taking 20 years to put into Orbit. You need technology able to put up a 100,000 tons, quickly, easily, and cheaply (cents per ton) into Lower Earth Orbit at least, preferably out to Largrane Point 4/5 for Space Travel to take off.
The biggest problem in space travel is taht we sit down here at the bottom of the earth's gravity well.
Until you can do this, the space program remains nothing more than a rich mans dream. NO matter how technologically savy you are, or how much your able to reuse, you still have to build a billion dollar launch vehicle, and spend years ferry up equipment and supply for any large scale enterprise like a moon base. Space only becomes viable when the cost of shipping there drops from millions of dollars a pound to dollars per pound, and the sureity of your payload getting there increases to better than 3 sigma.
The answers to this has been known since the 50s, and it's not build the better launch vehilce, it's get rid of the launch vehicle all together.
Take a large mountain, build an electro-magnetic launcher up it's side. Second World War tech... but it works. Wrap your payload in a container that burns off as it goes up, fire it up the rail gun, and up into orbit it goes. Not something I'd put a person in at first, but certainly something useful for shipping equipment and supplies with. And suddenly your cost of putting a pay load in orbit is the casing to wrap it in for atmospheric protection (which could very easily be ice), and the electricity to accelerate it to orbit.
Despite what we might like to think, that space travel will come tomorrow, that the pace will quicken, but it'll be several hundred years BEFORE the space program really gets going.
Now before you all scream, let me explain why I think the way I do. (ignoring historical exception cases like the Greenland Colonies and St. Bernard), large scale European Colonization/Travel to/of the the Americas took nearly 400 years to get going. Columbus sailed into town in 1492, but a hundred years later other than a few outposts like Vieux-Quebec, St Augustine, and Roanoke, not much else had been done. Large colonization didn't happen till the advent of the steamship, in the 1870s, when technology caught up.
At this point we are still at the crown jewels stage... Isabella, err I mean Hillary hauks her crown jewels and a new expedition heads off to the new world. Before large scale travel and colonization (no point in travelling if there is no where to travel *to*) happens there has to be a technological jump. The cost of getting there, and the time to get there needs to come down to reasonable levels. Dumping a billion bucks out the tail pipe to visit an airless rock may get astronomy nuts like me excited but it's something that only the richest governments and corporations can even begin to ponder.
The first change that needs to happen is that we need to find a cheap and efficient way to get large quantities of manufacutered goods into LEO that doesn't require sticking them atop a candle made of LOX and lighting it off.
Flip over to another industry, the one that rights my pay check, and likely yours, the computer industry. EINAIC fired up in 1942? Altair put out the first "personal machine" in 1976? The PC followed when? We didn't see "revolution" though till the mid 1990s, 50 years afterwards?
So be paitent while the industry gets going... but if it follows the standard development track, the age of government funded dinosaurs will have to come to an end and then it'll go into large "contractors" doing it, and eventually the technology will become so prevelant and everyday that everyone'll do it.
Creating another government agency to compeet with nasa isn't going to do anyone or anything any good. Get it out of the public sector into the private sector... get technological innovation going. Robert Zubrin's Mar's group has a great idea on how to get that going. Rather than having NASA pay for hardware, have NASA award prizes. NASA wants a manned Mars mission. Award 2 billion to the organization that meets the correct set of criteria. AND I'm quite sure you won't have satellites crashing into Mars because of English/Metric conversion errors.
I would encourage you to continue with this attitude, the more people like you there are out there who have no idea what the contents of a software engineering textbook are, the more highly I get paid to fix your messes...
Slashdot Mirror
hmm... If I didn't already have a job, I'd ponder looking for a QA job where-ever you work cleaning up the mess.
> So maybe the question shouldn't have
> been, "what do you do for insurance," but "how > do you get good, quality, comprehensive
> healthcare in the United States as a self-
> employed person"?
Unless you're as filthy rich as Bill or Larry,
you don't.
> Verizon is a public corporation. It answers to > its shareholders, who's only concern is profit.
uh huh. Would you like a Black Rocket with that,
too? VZ is big enough that at times different parts are doing different things, some of them
things that clearly don't benefit the shareholders and may disagree with things that other parts of the company are doing. It's what happens when you have a 200,000+ person company.
Dr. E.E. Smith the 6 book Lensman Series (Triplanetary, First Lensman, Grey Lensman, Second Stage Lensman, Children of the Lens, Galatic Patrol). Another book by him worthy
of note is the Skylark of Space. All of his
writing is before 1950... but still worthy it.
I'd also suggest Katherine Kerr's Deverry Series.
(yes I know it crosses the line into Fantasy,
but it does it in a way that you can almost believe it's Speculative Fiction) I'd give the
titles but I've got the British Copies which have
different ones that the ones in the states.
Simon Green's Deathstalker Universe is another good one to dig into... 6 or 7 books these days
centering around the life and adventures of Owen Deathstalker.
It doesn't matter what technology you pick, the user doesn't care, just so long as it works. It matters in how quickly it allows you to get a product out the door that people are going to buy....
take the unicode example offered...
Let's be realistic, the bulk of your sales are likely going to be in the US, Canada, and the EU. All places you can get by with 8 bit ascii. By the time your package gets to the point where you need Arabic, and Chinese, and Japansese versions, you're likely going to be long gone from the project and stiffs who specialize in that conversion will be making it.
So unless using Unicode reduces your time to market significantly, it doesn't make the company any money, and you should save it for your recreational programming.
He doesn't understand that there is anyone else out there besides him. Laws about hands free don't solve the crux issue which is his lack of morals. He's not thought about and understood consequences of his decisions...or he doesn't care.
I'm going to not talk on my phone because when I become distracted I might kill someone through my reduced reaction time
So while you might solve the preceived issue through legislation... you will not solve the issue which is that people don't think about the consequences of their actions when they are behind the wheel.
For Instance take these examples...
the guy who went flying around the curve on I-95 below Hanscom Field in the inside lane at 85 on my way to work this morning seems to have a similar problem...
Or the Saab who did the four lane sweep out of US3 onto 128...
Or the lady with her kids bouncing around in the back of her minivan on rte 62 yesterday afternoon...
Or the guy I watched eating a burger as we were both going through the Hooksett tolls on Saturday...
or mayhaps the State Trooper on the Pike last thursday who while seeming in no legal rush was flying West from Allston-Brighton at 80+ MPH suspicously close to shift change...
Or mayhaps the owner of the El-Camino with Maine tags I parked next to at Dunkin' Donuts this morning that had bald tires...
Or mayhaps the low riding, detailed out Ford Contour with the stereo pumping out the latest hip-hop jam I had the joy of sitting next to at a light in Woburn a week past on a warm day...
Laws about hands free don't solve the issue that these drivers got their licenses out of cracker jack boxes and obviously didn't learn the potential impact of their actions.
Personally I didn't really realize myself until years after I got my license. I mean I knew it intellectually... and I follow the law... but it did not sink in on that gutt level.
For me the transition from an intellectual knowledge to that gutt knowledge happened when I watched from a house in Castine Maine the Hancock County Mounties scrape a young kid off a guard-rail on Maine Route 166 when he tried to take his bike around a steep curve at 110 while inebriated. People just don't realize till it affects them. I really think we should make it a requirement for kids getting their license to help clean up one traffic accident.
So while cell phones usage while driving may be a great campaign issue for politicians in seach of re-election (calling Swifty). It side steps the real issue which is that many drivers on the road today (and not just those in New England) don't really have a sense of what the impact of some of their preceived minor actions might be, the loss of their lives or even more sadly some innocent bystanders
This article entirely misses the point of VC. VC isn't out for you or your company, they are out for themselves, and if that means they leave a body count behind, it's just part of the business.
the VC's goal in investing is increase his money immensely. Just like a lot of folks had as a goal when they dumped untold millions on Power Ball or the Big Game. Start Ups are VC's version of the lottery, and just like when I lost powerball, both toss the ticket when it's clear it's a looser. (and since these are folks who if they loose a few dollars aren't going to miss a meal, it's little emotional investment for them to toss you and your company)
Just like a loan shark, expect unreasonable demands, exhorbitant interest rates, and an indifference to anything but getting their money back and the expected rate of return... since VC is a little more than legal loan sharking.
As a founder it's in your best interest to be very very clear on this before you sell your soul to the devil. My suggestion for an education is go look up the reference to Mark Twain's Republic of Gonder... walking in assuming these people are interested in anything more than their money is just poor thinking.
you get told in the corporate world to multi-task all the time... it's the quality of a senior engineer... since it's a good quality you won't mind if I talk on my cell phone while driving? will you? I mean good senior people know how to multi-task, and my last review says right here that I am one...so now what was that number, I need to have a good arguement with...
An Example:
Here in Boston about two years ago a college student at MIT died from drinking too much. (Voluntarily or In-Voluntarily leave for the courts to decide) So our well meaning General Court, and "officials" in Cambridge and Boston, legislated "tougher" standards on under aged drinking. From what I can tell it hasn't changed a thing beyond making a few politicians sleep better at night, and creating a few more pages of laws.
Where I work, we don't officially have flex-time. The employee handbook says it's 8:30am - 5:30pm with an hour for lunch. I don't think many know it's there, and it's not SOP.
SOP here is your here for the core hours of 10 -2, and you work a regular day. (i.e. same hours all the time) I'm generally a 6:30am sort, but another lady in my department just can't get here before 10. (kids and she's not an early riser)
In thinking about running my project I don't want to sit there with a stop watch keeping track of folks. When you get here you leave 8ish hours later. I want to know when to find you (okay it's 9. Sheri's not here for another hour...). Beyond that I really don't give a shit, no offense but I've got better things to do for the company... if you want useless paper and procedure go talk to the union boys down on the floor. (you should see the crap they've got procedures for!)
I feel the same way about dress. Don't really much care what you wear so long as it meets decency standards (no odd parts hanging out). For the lady's this also means that it doesn't create a distraction for the guys (backless sundresses, micro skirts...are a distracting thing). For the guys it means about the same (save the muscle shirts for elsewhere). Most of the folk in my department sit at a computer for a large part of their work days... It's just common decency to allow them to be comfortable as they do that. But the catch is if your offsite or dealing with a customer you will be business casual at a minimum. I suffer through long pants others can too!
Beyond that... my attitude is my job is to get the project done, and your free to do what you need to do to make yourself productive. If what your doing is making you or others unproductive then we will talk. I'm hired to be a project lead, a mother.
I'll admit right off the bat that "where" could be indicative of "who". If you saw something coming from California or Newfoundland you could bet it was not me. But it doesn't say anything about wether or not it really is you. Those most likely to steal an identity, are not the random person in San Diego or St. John's but someone who knows you well. It's your coworker in the next office, it's your brother who you live with. About all you can do with GPS technology is to tell me which keyboard in question things came from, but that says nothing about what's between the keyboard and the chair. The first rule of computer security applys with authentication, "The Biggest Security Risk is the user". Until you can phsyically implant the authentication device inside the user AND make it unhackable (an impossibility), there's no guarentees. Because I can just coach someone elese to provide the responses. I remember one quip I heard once while having some stuff tested at Fort Hauchuca in Arizona... "Colonel, that machine is secure" "Son, that machine is only secure if you remove all cables from the CPU, encase it in cement and sit a man with a gun on top of it, and even then I'd worry." same applys with authentication.
and it was built by the lowest bidder.
The numbers I've seen, though I don't have them in front of me indicate that with a reasonable length rail (like 2 miles) and acceleration at 10G, you can do it. Remember I'm not advocating putting people in here, merely manufacutered parts and things like grain.
Runway? SSTO? that still misses the key technical lack and why the international space station is taking 20 years to put into Orbit. You need technology able to put up a 100,000 tons, quickly, easily, and cheaply (cents per ton) into Lower Earth Orbit at least, preferably out to Largrane Point 4/5 for Space Travel to take off. The biggest problem in space travel is taht we sit down here at the bottom of the earth's gravity well.
Until you can do this, the space program remains nothing more than a rich mans dream. NO matter how technologically savy you are, or how much your able to reuse, you still have to build a billion dollar launch vehicle, and spend years ferry up equipment and supply for any large scale enterprise like a moon base. Space only becomes viable when the cost of shipping there drops from millions of dollars a pound to dollars per pound, and the sureity of your payload getting there increases to better than 3 sigma.
The answers to this has been known since the 50s, and it's not build the better launch vehilce, it's get rid of the launch vehicle all together.
Take a large mountain, build an electro-magnetic launcher up it's side. Second World War tech... but it works. Wrap your payload in a container that burns off as it goes up, fire it up the rail gun, and up into orbit it goes. Not something I'd put a person in at first, but certainly something useful for shipping equipment and supplies with. And suddenly your cost of putting a pay load in orbit is the casing to wrap it in for atmospheric protection (which could very easily be ice), and the electricity to accelerate it to orbit.
Despite what we might like to think, that space travel will come tomorrow, that the pace will quicken, but it'll be several hundred years BEFORE the space program really gets going.
Now before you all scream, let me explain why I think the way I do. (ignoring historical exception cases like the Greenland Colonies and St. Bernard), large scale European Colonization/Travel to/of the the Americas took nearly 400 years to get going. Columbus sailed into town in 1492, but a hundred years later other than a few outposts like Vieux-Quebec, St Augustine, and Roanoke, not much else had been done. Large colonization didn't happen till the advent of the steamship, in the 1870s, when technology caught up.
At this point we are still at the crown jewels stage... Isabella, err I mean Hillary hauks her crown jewels and a new expedition heads off to the new world. Before large scale travel and colonization (no point in travelling if there is no where to travel *to*) happens there has to be a technological jump. The cost of getting there, and the time to get there needs to come down to reasonable levels. Dumping a billion bucks out the tail pipe to visit an airless rock may get astronomy nuts like me excited but it's something that only the richest governments and corporations can even begin to ponder.
The first change that needs to happen is that we need to find a cheap and efficient way to get large quantities of manufacutered goods into LEO that doesn't require sticking them atop a candle made of LOX and lighting it off.
Flip over to another industry, the one that rights my pay check, and likely yours, the computer industry. EINAIC fired up in 1942? Altair put out the first "personal machine" in 1976? The PC followed when? We didn't see "revolution" though till the mid 1990s, 50 years afterwards?
So be paitent while the industry gets going... but if it follows the standard development track, the age of government funded dinosaurs will have to come to an end and then it'll go into large "contractors" doing it, and eventually the technology will become so prevelant and everyday that everyone'll do it.
Creating another government agency to compeet with nasa isn't going to do anyone or anything any good. Get it out of the public sector into the private sector... get technological innovation going. Robert Zubrin's Mar's group has a great idea on how to get that going. Rather than having NASA pay for hardware, have NASA award prizes. NASA wants a manned Mars mission. Award 2 billion to the organization that meets the correct set of criteria. AND I'm quite sure you won't have satellites crashing into Mars because of English/Metric conversion errors.
I would encourage you to continue with this attitude, the more people like you there are out there who have no idea what the contents of a software engineering textbook are, the more highly I get paid to fix your messes...