Customer Service/Tech Support, no large company....
Sell to small companies. Sell services to large companies. I am currently renting myself to a large company that now wants to employ me. Tough decision to make, but nice to get to choose.
Sales...web page...phone
My web site runs me $45 a month for full root access and so much bandwidth that I host 10 smaller sites for $5 month each (paid annually) and get a wash on the expenses. The customers pay by PayPal or check and I get free business checking.
My Vonage phone costs $35 a month for a voice line (with call forwarding, email notification of messages, and web access to messages) and dedicated FAX line (which rings to a computer sitting in my study which was always on anyway).
Distribution/packaging....
All depends on what business you are getting into.
All of these points are assuming a large business model for a small
company.
Think small. Think cheap.
Grow when you need to grow.
The other path is take lots of funding and give away lots of equity.
For C++, binary compatible goes the extra distance of requiring that the dynamic dispatch and run-time type information layouts be the same.
When a C++ class gets created, there are hidden bits of data that
are used to handle virtual functions and the likes of .
Many binary interface standards don't specify how these work, but to be
truly compatible, the two compilers have to match here.
See
Stroustup's Technical FAQ for a little more information.
This was also the South by Southwest Interactive
Question
of the day on December 23.
They referenced the Wired article and asked for opinions from
SXSW Interactive presenters.
I've been getting these in my email every day for a few weeks
since I'm on a panel on accessible web navigation
on behalf of Knowbility
and Omniscient Turtle.
Sadly, nobody gave me the
iSight
I wanted for Christmas (as published
in the first question of the day), so I ordered one for myself.
If you're (un)lucky enough to work for an F500 company, you will probably have noticed that your tie is your most important asset in a job interview.
How odd, I've worked at (as an employee) one and for (as a consultant) several Fortune 500 companies. I'm currently at AMD as a contractor. I don't think AMD is in the Fortune 500 this year, but it has been and likely will be.
I can't even remember the last time I wore a tie to an interview, let alone
to work on a regular day.
For customer visits, I very occasionally wear a tie, but not yet in this century.
no one ever got fired for buying [fill in the blank]
That may be a fine excuse for people at large, or even medium, companies buying software or hardware from [fill in the blank], it doesn't explain why small
business owners use PCs.
It's not about getting fired - after all they own the business - it's about
keeping the business running without getting lost on side issues.
Apple just put out a story about Sullivan Street Bakery chose to switch (back) to Macs.
The reason they switched is one of the owners preferred Macs, had done FileMaker work in a prior career, and they were not satisifed with the PC software they used (and the monthly maintenance fee).
My experience is that small business owners are pretty pragmatic.
If the cost of the solution is low enough and the advantages high enough (the applications are there), they will pick the software and hardware platform that works best.
Macs have pretty low switching cost.
There are thousands of small computer consulting firms ready to pitch Windows
solutions.
Linux is still hard for non-techies.
It's not common to find places to purchase a machine preconfigured with Linux and some reasonable apps; Macs and PCs often come with almost everything they need (perhaps requiring a couple of easy to install applications).
I work with a small non-profit, which is finally converting to Linux
this year.
First barrier was a Windows server with hosting service had been donated.
That barrier went down when the donation of hosting stopped and the expensive
monthly fee kicked in.
Second barrier was a boatload of ASP pages that had been donated by
a local Windows consulting fir,
That barrier went down when the lack of licenses for the tools made it impossible
to keep the updates going; we switched to JSP running on Windows.
The final barrier came down when we found a donor to host the 30-odd web sites
that we were hosting for clients.
The move is happening this month; it's my Christmas vacation project.
Here's what I think is needed to get small businesses on Linux:
Machines with pre-installed Linux at local computer stores
A handful of applications (a la Filemaker Pro I guess) installable from CDs, purchased at the same store as the computer
Local, cheap, computer firms that promote Linux will do setup and troubleshooting
Most of what we do isn't urgent, but interactivity isn't just for urgency. Not everyone uses email interactively, that's mostly a techie thing. Pretty much everyone who uses IM uses it interactively. An email works great when I'm communicating something that is completely specified with little ambiguity. An IM allows immediate interaction if the person is present. The person I'm IMing with can ask clarifying questions, or they can look at the problem and toss up a sketch of a solution and ask if it's OK. I can then give immediate feedback. This can happen with email, but it can be a much longer cycle time.
My boss processes email 2-3 times per day. If she's on IM, I can grab her attention for 10 seconds and get the answer now. If I send the email, it could take 3-4 hours (or sometimes days) to get a response. The ability to email her for status and low interaction stuff and use IM for quick turnaround (not necessarily urgent, but interactive) communication is valuable.
"Convert an integer passed as argument to a level. If the conversion fails, then this method returns the specified default." is a direct quote from the log4j documentation; log4j is licensed under the Apache License. The real question is why somebody/somebodies bothered to copy the javadoc from the parent class. That's just wasteful.
It's not just as simple as looking at the code and noting similarities. In this, and at least some of the other cited problems, both projects are extending other code. Many (most? all?) of the similarities are easily explained by that.
If you want to get bleeding edge maps, hook the suckers into concrete trucks. These are the guys pouring the new roads. Cemex already instruments their trucks. The problem you have to deal with is the trucks go off-road a lot for pours, so some of your "streets" won't be there (yet). Similarly with UPS/FedEx trucks, you'll get an awesome map - of parking lots.
Email lists and web sites are different.
They are different in style of interaction.
They are different in the way they present information.
They are different in the way they archive it.
Email notification of updates to a web site should definitely be optional.
If I send updates by email, they come in bits and pieces delivered to the user at possibly inopportune times.
If I use a web site, the user can view the current status when they want.
If I send all of my project updates out on an email list, the email list archive contains lots of old messages that no longer reflect the project status or design.
A web site can be updated so the obsolete information is no longer there (but is available via the source control system for those who need to look at it.
I don't need to read 87 messages on the hyperthreading problem and discard the ones that were dead ends to find out what the current status of the bug is and where the fix is in testing.
If I send all of my project updates out on an email list, a reader has to read them all to be up to date.
A web site can organize the information so high level status is all in one place and details are available as needed.
My Director can go look at a pretty page of implemented features vs. not implemented features and have nice color coding show where we are relative to plan (red is bad).
We do this with TWiki and a
plugin.
My fellow developers can look at pages that have current test plans, detailed designs, and links to our source code repository.
All of these can be kept up to date.
All with RSS feeds, optional email notification (which I find annoying and leave turned off), and a web page that shows recent changes to the web.
A non-disclosure is not a non-compete. A non-disclosure can only prohibit disclosure of confidential information. A non-disclosure should clearly define information that is confidential and actions that make it disclosable. Notably, if you learn the same information through a public channel (one not covered by NDA) you are allowed disclose it.
I have a spooky 10-year NDA with IBM regarding PowerPC features and test methods that doesn't expire until early next year. I'd estimate 99+% of what I learned on the project is now public information so I no longer fear talking to people about the instruction set (parts of which were under NDA at the time I did the project) and most of the then-bleeding-edge test methods have been presented at numerous contracts. For a few years, I actually ran occasional searches to let me know when IBM disclosed things so I knew I could talk about them. Now I can pretty freely talk about random test vector generation.
My very favorite part of the IBM thing was they had lawyers review and blackout every document that hit my desk;
apparently they thought my NDA wasn't strong enough.
I received a manual on the test generation program
that had all of the numerical constants in the examples blacked out.
As an exercise, I reverse engineered them all from
the descriptions.
I have only had a few NDAs that actually prohibited mentioning the clients name. I charge a lot for that privilege.
Actually, developers are better off going ahead without doing the patent research and infringing than they are knowing about the patent and trying to work around it. If you know about the patent, they can go for extra damages when they sue you, even (or especially) if you tried to work around the patent. If you don't know, they can still sue you, but not for the extra damages.
This applies in the US, but possibly not elsewhere.
IANAL, but a former corporate IP attorney told us to do this and let him worry about the patents.
Locking a bicycle at the train station definiteyl seems like a good option. Most train stations have bicycle racks these days. The really nice thing about getting a cheap bicycle (aka a "beater") is that probably nobody will still it.
Ron Paul is a former Libertarian who joined the Republican party (in my opinion) so he could get elected. He's probably just voting it down on libertarian principles.
Why would a field that seems to be defined by unpaid overtime need timeclocks?
I am a techie (programmer). I get paid by the hour. Time and a half for overtime. Mostly, I try to work part-time.
In my current role, I work with salaried staff who are working on three different projects.
As part of tracking expense on the projects, we want to allocate time they spend. So, they fill out time sheets that split their hours (a nominal 40 hour week) across the projects they work on.
My time sheet is an Excel spreadsheet that takes me about 2 minutes to full out. Each day has start time, end time, and length of lunch break.
The rest is calculated automatically.
My manager approves the time sheet (by forwarding an email with the spreadsheet attached) before I get paid.
This means that you owe them money (because someone else you owe money has transferred that to them).
Does not follow. Several times in the past three years I have had credit agencies call me looking for a deadbeat with the same first and last name who used to live 200 miles away. Apparently, they decided looking in the phonebook was a good way to track the guy down. Each time, I corrected their misimpression, filed a complaint with the FTC, and followed up with a check to my credit report to make sure they weren't dinging me.
Technically, Google did not buy Deja, they just bought a bunch of data. Deja was purchased by buy.com, part of eBay and is now firmly merged into eBay (with some of the folks over in paypal). </p>
I don't think prohibiting all sales of stock would achieve the goal, which is to incent the employees to work hard for the company and keep them working there.
Those getting Incentive Stock Options (also known as qualified options) are already somewhat motivated to keep the stock to meet the holding period required to keep the options qualified (2 years from grant date, one year from purchase date causes the profit to be capital rather than income).
Another apporach to use for incenting the desired behavior is an Employee Stock Purchase Program (stock bought at 85% of market and often with a two year holding period to stay in the purchase program) or outright grants (obviously at lower numbers of shares) of restricted stock.
If I were running the show, I'd go for stock grants to reward employee contributions with a two year holding restriction. I hope I have that problem in the next 5 years with a company I am starting now.
my company standardized on "more/var/spool/mail/$USER" for reading mail. sending mail is currently unsupported.
Bunch of losers. We standardized on cat/var/spool/mail/$USER since more requires one of them thur modurn term-in-alls. We use telnet mail_server 25 to send mail, just like all real geeks.
I used to work with Darl (as in have frequent 1-on-1 and group interactions with him) when he
was CEO of PointServe and I was
the Chief [Software] Architect.
Like most CEOs, sadly both the good ones and bad
ones, he has a very large ego and strong
self-confidence.
This self-confidence, at least in Darl's case,
is independent of that validity of the underlying
facts, plans, or business conditions.
At PointServe he routinely made claims amounting
to "the future's so bright, you gotta wear shades"
about our Internet business plans for scheduling
and routing of mobile field personnel.
The plans behind these services were never adequately developed and there was no reality behind them.
He did work very hard on making sure there was hype around the plans though.
He pressured us to hire (this quote might be his or the words of the VP of marketing)
"Internet Rock Stars" - by which they meant
a consulting firm that would look good to the possible
investors in creating credible for our Internet story.
One should definitely look at all of Darl's
previous companies when considering his background.
When I read what Darl is saying now, I can't help
but wonder if there is a similar amount of reality,
fronted by a similar amount of bluster, in
his words about SCO.
Oh yes, Darl and Rick pushed us to hire a consulting
firm with which Darl had prior experience (details
of which I'll leave to the lawyers).
They completely failed to build anything useful,
PointServe still sort of exists, and the consulting
deal is, last I checked, still under litigation.
Is there a theme here?
Is there another Central London we didn't know about?
A quick search found 10 in the US (KY, OH, AR, CA, MN, OR, TX, AL - oddly seems to have two, and IN). I imagine there are a number of others around the world, but who knows for sure? Only a couple of the Londons in the US seemed large enough to have a "Central London" worth mentioning, and it seems unlikely that any of them require stickers to drive in Central London, especially stickers with a price in Pounds.
The bindings are possible. You can use JNI (Java Native Interface) to hook Java code directly to C or C++. It's a tad contorted, but not nearly as torturous as using CORBA to do it.
Slashdot Mirror
Sell to small companies. Sell services to large companies. I am currently renting myself to a large company that now wants to employ me. Tough decision to make, but nice to get to choose.
Sales...web page...phoneMy web site runs me $45 a month for full root access and so much bandwidth that I host 10 smaller sites for $5 month each (paid annually) and get a wash on the expenses. The customers pay by PayPal or check and I get free business checking. My Vonage phone costs $35 a month for a voice line (with call forwarding, email notification of messages, and web access to messages) and dedicated FAX line (which rings to a computer sitting in my study which was always on anyway).
Distribution/packaging....All depends on what business you are getting into. All of these points are assuming a large business model for a small company. Think small. Think cheap. Grow when you need to grow. The other path is take lots of funding and give away lots of equity.
For C++, binary compatible goes the extra distance of requiring that the dynamic dispatch and run-time type information layouts be the same. When a C++ class gets created, there are hidden bits of data that are used to handle virtual functions and the likes of . Many binary interface standards don't specify how these work, but to be truly compatible, the two compilers have to match here. See Stroustup's Technical FAQ for a little more information.
Live vault is partially funded by Iron Mountain
This was also the South by Southwest Interactive Question of the day on December 23. They referenced the Wired article and asked for opinions from SXSW Interactive presenters.
I've been getting these in my email every day for a few weeks since I'm on a panel on accessible web navigation on behalf of Knowbility and Omniscient Turtle. Sadly, nobody gave me the iSight I wanted for Christmas (as published in the first question of the day), so I ordered one for myself.
How odd, I've worked at (as an employee) one and for (as a consultant) several Fortune 500 companies. I'm currently at AMD as a contractor. I don't think AMD is in the Fortune 500 this year, but it has been and likely will be. I can't even remember the last time I wore a tie to an interview, let alone to work on a regular day. For customer visits, I very occasionally wear a tie, but not yet in this century.
That may be a fine excuse for people at large, or even medium, companies buying software or hardware from [fill in the blank], it doesn't explain why small business owners use PCs. It's not about getting fired - after all they own the business - it's about keeping the business running without getting lost on side issues.
Apple just put out a story about Sullivan Street Bakery chose to switch (back) to Macs. The reason they switched is one of the owners preferred Macs, had done FileMaker work in a prior career, and they were not satisifed with the PC software they used (and the monthly maintenance fee).
My experience is that small business owners are pretty pragmatic. If the cost of the solution is low enough and the advantages high enough (the applications are there), they will pick the software and hardware platform that works best. Macs have pretty low switching cost. There are thousands of small computer consulting firms ready to pitch Windows solutions. Linux is still hard for non-techies. It's not common to find places to purchase a machine preconfigured with Linux and some reasonable apps; Macs and PCs often come with almost everything they need (perhaps requiring a couple of easy to install applications).
I work with a small non-profit, which is finally converting to Linux this year. First barrier was a Windows server with hosting service had been donated. That barrier went down when the donation of hosting stopped and the expensive monthly fee kicked in. Second barrier was a boatload of ASP pages that had been donated by a local Windows consulting fir, That barrier went down when the lack of licenses for the tools made it impossible to keep the updates going; we switched to JSP running on Windows. The final barrier came down when we found a donor to host the 30-odd web sites that we were hosting for clients. The move is happening this month; it's my Christmas vacation project.
Here's what I think is needed to get small businesses on Linux:
It seems like that the "Robert George of Princeton Law School" mentioned in the New Jersey Ballot site (second "this") is probably Robert George, Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton. It seems like an understandable error to mistakenly assume the Professor of Jurisprudence is at a Law School.
Most of what we do isn't urgent, but interactivity isn't just for urgency. Not everyone uses email interactively, that's mostly a techie thing. Pretty much everyone who uses IM uses it interactively. An email works great when I'm communicating something that is completely specified with little ambiguity. An IM allows immediate interaction if the person is present. The person I'm IMing with can ask clarifying questions, or they can look at the problem and toss up a sketch of a solution and ask if it's OK. I can then give immediate feedback. This can happen with email, but it can be a much longer cycle time.
My boss processes email 2-3 times per day. If she's on IM, I can grab her attention for 10 seconds and get the answer now. If I send the email, it could take 3-4 hours (or sometimes days) to get a response. The ability to email her for status and low interaction stuff and use IM for quick turnaround (not necessarily urgent, but interactive) communication is valuable.
"Convert an integer passed as argument to a level. If the conversion fails, then this method returns the specified default." is a direct quote from the log4j documentation; log4j is licensed under the Apache License. The real question is why somebody/somebodies bothered to copy the javadoc from the parent class. That's just wasteful.
It's not just as simple as looking at the code and noting similarities. In this, and at least some of the other cited problems, both projects are extending other code. Many (most? all?) of the similarities are easily explained by that.
No, no, no, no.
If you want to get bleeding edge maps, hook the suckers into concrete trucks. These are the guys pouring the new roads. Cemex already instruments their trucks. The problem you have to deal with is the trucks go off-road a lot for pours, so some of your "streets" won't be there (yet). Similarly with UPS/FedEx trucks, you'll get an awesome map - of parking lots.
You mean like this?
Email lists and web sites are different. They are different in style of interaction. They are different in the way they present information. They are different in the way they archive it. Email notification of updates to a web site should definitely be optional.
If I send updates by email, they come in bits and pieces delivered to the user at possibly inopportune times. If I use a web site, the user can view the current status when they want.
If I send all of my project updates out on an email list, the email list archive contains lots of old messages that no longer reflect the project status or design. A web site can be updated so the obsolete information is no longer there (but is available via the source control system for those who need to look at it. I don't need to read 87 messages on the hyperthreading problem and discard the ones that were dead ends to find out what the current status of the bug is and where the fix is in testing.
If I send all of my project updates out on an email list, a reader has to read them all to be up to date. A web site can organize the information so high level status is all in one place and details are available as needed. My Director can go look at a pretty page of implemented features vs. not implemented features and have nice color coding show where we are relative to plan (red is bad). We do this with TWiki and a plugin. My fellow developers can look at pages that have current test plans, detailed designs, and links to our source code repository. All of these can be kept up to date.
All with RSS feeds, optional email notification (which I find annoying and leave turned off), and a web page that shows recent changes to the web.
A non-disclosure is not a non-compete. A non-disclosure can only prohibit disclosure of confidential information. A non-disclosure should clearly define information that is confidential and actions that make it disclosable. Notably, if you learn the same information through a public channel (one not covered by NDA) you are allowed disclose it.
I have a spooky 10-year NDA with IBM regarding PowerPC features and test methods that doesn't expire until early next year. I'd estimate 99+% of what I learned on the project is now public information so I no longer fear talking to people about the instruction set (parts of which were under NDA at the time I did the project) and most of the then-bleeding-edge test methods have been presented at numerous contracts. For a few years, I actually ran occasional searches to let me know when IBM disclosed things so I knew I could talk about them. Now I can pretty freely talk about random test vector generation.
My very favorite part of the IBM thing was they had lawyers review and blackout every document that hit my desk; apparently they thought my NDA wasn't strong enough. I received a manual on the test generation program that had all of the numerical constants in the examples blacked out. As an exercise, I reverse engineered them all from the descriptions.
I have only had a few NDAs that actually prohibited mentioning the clients name. I charge a lot for that privilege.
Actually, developers are better off going ahead without doing the patent research and infringing than they are knowing about the patent and trying to work around it. If you know about the patent, they can go for extra damages when they sue you, even (or especially) if you tried to work around the patent. If you don't know, they can still sue you, but not for the extra damages.
This applies in the US, but possibly not elsewhere.
IANAL, but a former corporate IP attorney told us to do this and let him worry about the patents.
Locking a bicycle at the train station definiteyl seems like a good option. Most train stations have bicycle racks these days. The really nice thing about getting a cheap bicycle (aka a "beater") is that probably nobody will still it.
The city of Toronto has a nice page on bicycle user tips
Ron Paul is a former Libertarian who joined the Republican party (in my opinion) so he could get elected.
He's probably just voting it down on libertarian principles.
I am a techie (programmer). I get paid by the hour. Time and a half for overtime. Mostly, I try to work part-time.
In my current role, I work with salaried staff who are working on three different projects. As part of tracking expense on the projects, we want to allocate time they spend. So, they fill out time sheets that split their hours (a nominal 40 hour week) across the projects they work on.
My time sheet is an Excel spreadsheet that takes me about 2 minutes to full out. Each day has start time, end time, and length of lunch break. The rest is calculated automatically. My manager approves the time sheet (by forwarding an email with the spreadsheet attached) before I get paid.
NCO is a collections agency.
If others' guesses are correct.
This means that you owe them money (because someone else you owe money has transferred that to them).
Does not follow. Several times in the past three years I have had credit agencies call me looking for a deadbeat with the same first and last name who used to live 200 miles away. Apparently, they decided looking in the phonebook was a good way to track the guy down. Each time, I corrected their misimpression, filed a complaint with the FTC, and followed up with a check to my credit report to make sure they weren't dinging me.
Apple has a special contact address for accessibility issues:
specialneeds@apple.com
800-767-2775
Technically, Google did not buy Deja, they just bought a bunch of data. Deja was purchased by buy.com, part of eBay and is now firmly merged into eBay (with some of the folks over in paypal).
</p>
I don't think prohibiting all sales of stock would achieve the goal, which is to incent the employees to work hard for the company and keep them working there.
Those getting Incentive Stock Options (also known as qualified options) are already somewhat motivated to keep the stock to meet the holding period required to keep the options qualified (2 years from grant date, one year from purchase date causes the profit to be capital rather than income).
Another apporach to use for incenting the desired behavior is an Employee Stock Purchase Program (stock bought at 85% of market and often with a two year holding period to stay in the purchase program) or outright grants (obviously at lower numbers of shares) of restricted stock.
If I were running the show, I'd go for stock grants to reward employee contributions with a two year holding restriction. I hope I have that problem in the next 5 years with a company I am starting now.
Bunch of losers. We standardized on cat /var/spool/mail/$USER since more requires one of them thur modurn term-in-alls. We use telnet mail_server 25 to send mail, just like all real geeks.
I used to work with Darl (as in have frequent 1-on-1 and group interactions with him) when he was CEO of PointServe and I was the Chief [Software] Architect. Like most CEOs, sadly both the good ones and bad ones, he has a very large ego and strong self-confidence. This self-confidence, at least in Darl's case, is independent of that validity of the underlying facts, plans, or business conditions.
At PointServe he routinely made claims amounting to "the future's so bright, you gotta wear shades" about our Internet business plans for scheduling and routing of mobile field personnel. The plans behind these services were never adequately developed and there was no reality behind them. He did work very hard on making sure there was hype around the plans though. He pressured us to hire (this quote might be his or the words of the VP of marketing) "Internet Rock Stars" - by which they meant a consulting firm that would look good to the possible investors in creating credible for our Internet story. One should definitely look at all of Darl's previous companies when considering his background.
When I read what Darl is saying now, I can't help but wonder if there is a similar amount of reality, fronted by a similar amount of bluster, in his words about SCO.
Oh yes, Darl and Rick pushed us to hire a consulting firm with which Darl had prior experience (details of which I'll leave to the lawyers). They completely failed to build anything useful, PointServe still sort of exists, and the consulting deal is, last I checked, still under litigation. Is there a theme here?
A quick search found 10 in the US (KY, OH, AR, CA, MN, OR, TX, AL - oddly seems to have two, and IN). I imagine there are a number of others around the world, but who knows for sure? Only a couple of the Londons in the US seemed large enough to have a "Central London" worth mentioning, and it seems unlikely that any of them require stickers to drive in Central London, especially stickers with a price in Pounds.
The bindings are possible. You can use JNI (Java Native Interface) to hook Java code directly to C or C++. It's a tad contorted, but not nearly as torturous as using CORBA to do it.