SQL Server has had an XML web gateway since version 2000. You can run any query and output it as xml or have an xml template pull the query and transform the results with XSL, all without one line of server side script.
ASP.net uses XML for all the human-readable files, and the IIS in windows.net server finally uses Apache-style configuration files which are also XML.
Re-read my comment. What I meant is that he would be passing pamphlets (sp?) about birth control or why vaccines are important. They are not going to let him inject people unless there is nobody else available, which I doubt it since many missionaries are trained in basic nursing duties.
Think about it, what is a best use for a well-trained geek: Taking a computer and make it run without spending money on software, or doing clerical or menial work at a clinic?
I was going to say go for something unrelated, but there's plenty of volunteers working on normal average stuff that anyone can do. If you want to do good, volunteer in something that allows you to use your specialty.
For example, if I were a linux guy, I would find one of the groups that collects old hardware, reconditions it and deploys it with Linux at places (wherever) that cannot afford new computers and/or Windows. If you can do that and train a few locals too you will be making greater impact than volunteering for the Peace corps and handing out leaflets on birth control, vaccines, etc.
The reason I recommend you to pick something that allows you to use your experience is because you don't want to be left out of touch with your field for over a year (this would literally mean professional suicide for an IT person). If you are in IT and you spend a year making old and tired hardware work, you will hone your skills while you do something good, and it will even make good resume fodder later down the road.
Me? If I was single and felt like doing so, I would find a Spanish-speaking country and volunteer to teach programming and "Nerd English" to junior high kids (those of you that, like me, are not native English speakers know what I am talking about). To me teaching is the most challenging and rewarding occupation I could think of when salary is not an issue.
Regardless of the good that you want to do to society, there was a sacrifice incurred by yourself and your family. Make sure your decision balances these two factors. For example, you can publish it with a license that is open but does not give all your rights away, so people can use it for non-commercial purposes. Reserve the right to license it for commercial usage. Then go get a job with the NSA or a big security shop. EIther of these places would love (and pay top dollar) to hire a guy that has the initiative to build a better mouse trap.
You can also get a SBA loan and open a skeleton shop to substain the patent application, then use the license fees as the main revenue stream for the shop. Since yu are allowing free access to the technology for non-commercial use, nobody can bitch about it.
If you want to use the invention as resume fodder, you MUST patent it first to avoid your employer trying to steal it from you (or if working for the feds, classifying the whole damn thing).
If you GPL it first you will still keep bragging rights but you will not get any compensation for the time spent.
It was Princess Di's death. I was on shift the night it happened and it pretty much brought all news websites to their knees. That was the first time I noticed the low bandwidth version of CNN. At first I thought the site was choking because it looked like some graphics were not loading.
Still, I'll give it to Slashdot and to IRC. I spent most of 9/11 on IRC transcribing what was being reported on CNN, since for a while the site was pretty much useless. A bunch of us where also taking screen captures and posting them online so people could see the horror. I still have captures of the first flyover of the Pentagon, which is less than 10 miles from my office.
My colo is at JC and we took a hit yesterday. Tech support later told me UUNET had said there was a DDOS going on and it was dragging us down. I wonder if he was feeding me a line of B.S...
...that sells for about $30-$35 on CompUSA. I got one and it is a piece of crap (DOA, Mickey Mouse buttons, terrible cradle design...). The wife later bought herself a MS wireless optical blue which was a lot better (read: did not die after 2 days) than the Maxell. Later she got a MS Office keyboard bundle at Costco (it was so cheap that the mouse was literally free) that came with a MS Wireless optical Explorer, which is what I use now. Great mouse and it does not eat up batteries.
At my previous job I used three different IBM ThinkPads. These are great, even if they are expensive as hell and very very heavy. But they worked fine.
At my new job (I am employee #9 on a 11-person company) everybody has macs except me. Since I am the web developer and the code is in asp I inherited two Windows 2000 boxes. I had been dying to switch to mac since January, and this was the last excuse I needed to make the jump.
I got a killer deal for an iBook 600 with 256MB RAM (already upped to 384), airport and MS Office v:X retail. The whole bundle cost me less than a retail iBook 700 with 128MB of ram and no airport.
I am very happy with OS 10.2 and I have been able to do all my ASP work with just BBEdit Pro and the MS Remote Desktop client. I can manage my freeBSD and Linux servers thru the terminal without any theatrics. My friends that used to make fun of me for even considering the mac are now changing their minds when they see how easy it has been for me to make the switch. Plus the iBook is so light I don't feel it on my backpack.
I am of course counting down the days for when I can afford to get a Titanium Powerbook:-)
I decided to switch from mirc (shareware) to xchat (GPL) on Windows 2000 and XP so I can run the same client in Linux and Windows (same reason I run Mozilla if I am jumping continuosly between Windows and Linux: be familiar with one app that runs the same regardless of which PC I am sitting in front of).
One of the few real frustrations I have had while switching to Mac OS X is that I cannot figure out how to get xchat running on XDarwin:-(
And putty just rocks. It is my SSH client of choice for Windows.
I started to witness this decay while in engineering school, 1987-1992. Things were pretty lousy back then, I don't want to imagine how worse they are now.
I was probably in one of the last classes that actually learned drafting first, then CAD later (this is at the School of Engineering, University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez). Drafting was a pain but it really taught us the beauty of CAD/CAM and not to ever take it for granted. Same for numerical analysis: numerical analysis becomes a thing of beauty after you have spent two years getting HAMMERED with advanced calculus courses.
Now every mickey mouse NT admin is calling himself an engineer. It is a shame. Engineers are supposed to be able to build stuff, to apply science to resolve problems, but we are raising a new generation that is being trained to use software packages and that's about it.
Of course, generalizations are not good, and I am in awe of the next generation of hard core programmers that are being exposed to real programming languages and real world problems like building a kernel, not us that were writing stupid little Fortran (WATFIV!) programs on a freaking VAX.
Since when $4000-$6000 became prosumer range? The only product you could possibly buy at that price range and still call it "prosumer" with a straight face is a beat up race car to use on weekend races.
Prosumer is actually on the $1000-$1200 range. ust go to an electronics store and see how many camcorders. SLRs and digicams cross over that price range.
Mine died over its first weekend (bad firewire plug, so it would not recharge). I took it back to the store and it took longer to type into their system the exchange (which requires a floor manager to override the restocking fee) than what it took for them to decide it was broken and they were going to give me a new one.
10 minutes waiting on the genius bar til it was my turn. About 45 seconds of testing. 15 minutes of paperwork.
So no complaints here. As for the iPod itself, it rocks so hard I can't describe it. It is one of these things that is just done perfect. Something better comes along and you could care less because yours works exactly as you want it. As it is right now you could come up with an iPod killer at half the price and twice the connection bandwidth and that will not make me swap my iPod for something else.
As for the battery, do you really need 20+ hours of battery on one charge? What we need is something like the infoLithium batteries that my Sony DSC S70 camera uses. The camera always knows exactly how much power it has left based on your current usage. The iPod has a battery icon with 4 segments and that's it.
I use mine on the road about 2 hours per day, and I recharge it maybe every 3-4 days. I never leave it connected to the iBook, instead I connect it just to sync and recharge it with the power plug for the firewire cable. So far I have run out of power once, when I left it in the backpack over a weekend without making sure I had locked it. Seems my kid kept walking over the backpack and kept turning it on. Ouch.
I don't think it is off-topic. You are 100% right. The "tough job market" is for all the wannabes that exploited the dot-bomb demand for tech workers. Back in '97 I remember the cottage industry around DC dealing with NT training. These people aimed their training at people that were switching careers, not at IT professionals that were trying to improve their knowledge. A friend of mine did the MCSE thing and he used to find recruiters right outside the training centers. It was just insane!
The people that are really qualified and have the experience to back them up should do fine. The wannabes that did the dummies book thing will collect their unemployment and when it expires then they are screwed.
When I got hired at my current job the president (who is married to the CEO, this is a small shop!) told me I was one of 300+ applicants and that they spent 6 weeks interviewing people because everybody that came to them was a dot-bomb wannabe. Because of this he forced me to take some kind of quiz in Ansi SQL, which even after so many years dealing with SQL Server and Oracle I nearly flunked it (but did better than everybody else). I still did not believe him on the 300 applicants until I found a network folder with ALL 300 resumes. Amazing, out of the 300 there were maybe 15 people worth interviewing.
1. Sign it. 2. Collect whatever you can get them to pay you. If they pay by check, run to the freaking bank and cash that check ASAP. 3. Run like hell and get on with your life.
I was a hair short from being in your position. The day I was going to be told I was in the layoffs list I went to interview elsewhere. I went back to my office not knowing if I still had a job. The CEO told me she almost canned me but decided to leave me stay at the last second as long as I would take over the work of two expensive consultants. I said suuuure. 48 hours later I had my offer elsewhere, gave them 1-week notice (first time ever I give less than 2) and ran like hell.
I did not even sign a consultant agreement. Instead I told them that since I was a "nice guy" I was going to stay as a part-time employee. Instead of a $85/hour consultant I volunteered to be a $30/hr part time employee (they laid off 20% of all employees, and those of us that survived got cut our salaries by 20%). Why? Because the company is going down and they are going to screw all consultants, but they do not mess with payroll. I would rather get paid $30 now than have the $84/hr negotiated down to $20, and that is after 2-3 months of threatening to sue for non-payment.
Just take the money and run. Get on with your life. All that talk about the though job market is B.S. The same day I interviewed for my present job one of my friends got laid off at noon. At 2 PM he went to interview elsewhere. His offer arrived two days later, 4 hours ahead of mine.
I was thinking along the lines of an encrypted format. What about a magic gate memory stick? Is magic gate just a copy protection or can it be tied up to a certain device?
I had been bugging the wife since January to let me buy a mac. First an iBook and then I got greedy and started pushing for a Titanium powerbook.
She did not budge for months.
Then two weeks ago she made me an offer I could not refuse: I could either:
1. Buy an iBook now, and later, "maybe", she would get me the Ti Powerbook. Or,
2. Not buy an iBook now, and later, "big maybe", she would get me the Ti Powerbook.
My reply was "duh."
I actually lucked out big time. I got a 600MHZ iBook with a retail copy of MS Office V:x (over $400), 256 MB ram (that's a $70+ factory upgrade) and Airport ($100) for $1450. And the seller was nice enough to pay for the 2-day air shipping. The laptop was pristine and I absolutely adore it. And I am the guy that usually starts his rants with this disclosure: I am a card-carrying Microsoft-dot-whore.
Yet I am having the time of my life. The laptop is tiny and really light, so I don't feel it on my backpack. The Airport card works great with the D-link AP I picked up on eBay for $80 the same day. I also got an iPod, which rocks for my daily metro rail commute.
Later I bought BBEdit Pro ($79) to help me with one of the last things that keeps me tied up to Windows: my addiction to EditPlus.
The 12-in screen is perfect, and at the office I just plug it into a 19-in monitor, so no complaints here (even at 12-in the screen is plain beautiful, much nicer than my last two ThinkPads).
Of course, I am looking forward to the Titanium Powerbook, but I am having the time of my life with my iBook. Had I dediced to buy it retail (which would be 700 MHZ instead of 600 MHZ) I would had paid $1500 just for the laptop with 128MB of ram. I would have had to buy Ms Office for about $450 (I am still shocked that it was an original, I expected the guy to screw me and send me a CDR) and the Airport card for $100.
I can only tell you to forget about the obsolescence threat. Macs retain their value really well. Notice how you can buy a $15,000 Dodge and after 2 years its value drops by half, but a VW may lose only a couple grand in the same amount of time. Macs are built very nicely, I installed Jaguar on a blueberry mac G3 and it ran just fine. It was not a scorcher but it was more usable than any windows PC that was built at that time and is still lying around.
The most pleasing part of having the mac is not having to thinker with it. Even as solid as XP is when compared to 98 (yeah, it is very relative but you have to acknowledge XP only sucks half as much as 98), I always felt like XP is a tweak in progress. Its like having a kickass muscle car that you have to go every morning, open the hood and check the carbs for minor adjustments. The mac runs like a car with a solid state ignition. It just runs.
I submitted my switch story to Apple. I told them I still sleep 4 hours a night, because the hours I used to waste keeping my PC running are now spent doing stuff on the mac.
Get your mac, use it for 6 months and if Apple has issued something better then decide if it is worth the trouble to grab the new one and sell the old one. I will not be selling mine when I get the Powerbook, since the wife is already starting to show interest in the iBook, and once my little boy starts school I might get him an eMac.
Here's a different perspective on planned obsolecence:
I bought a Sony DSC-S70 Cybershot digital camera in Summer 2000. At the time it was the best (screw you Nikon) 3.3 megapix camera, and it had a Carl Zeiss lens that was just beautiful. A month or so ago I realized my trustworthy camera is already 2 years old, which would make it a dinosaur. Or not? 2 years later I still have people praise my photos, and the automatic reaction to my photos is always "what kind of camera did you use? These pictures are really sharp!"
I toyed with the idea of upgrading to the DSC-S85 but realized my camera is just great and there is no reason for me to upgrade. Maybe you will get your mac and like it so much that when the next one comes up you won't feel like you were left behind. Just buy the fastest one you can afford and do not pay Apple prices for ram, that is what eBay is for! I got my 256MB stick for $46 instead of the $150 Apple wanted.
Over 10 years ago, while still in Engineering school, 3M sent me a sample of a plastic that they wanted to sell for covering ATMs and computer screens. The screen was only visible if your axis of vision was perpendicular to the horizontal axis of the plastic. If you veered by more than 10-15 degrees it would turn completely black. The effect was only left-right, it had no influence if for example somebody stood behind you and peeked over your shoulder.
1. Programmer 2. Project Manager 3. Tech writer. 4. CTO/CIO 5. Instructional designer (or subject matter expert on your field)
Pretty much anything that does not require you to be a day-to-day first line supervisor for a team. Project management is possible since you are running the project, not the people.
At my previous job we had all these people telecommuting. The CTO telecommuted from Rhode Island to Maryland ahd he was pretty damn good at it. He travelled to our office once a month, spent two days in meetings and then back home for another month.
Half the programmers were telecommuters. Only one person out of 10 abused the telecommuting, the others played it by the book. They liked the concept so much that they did not dare goof it up.
Project managers do very well as part time telecommuters. It all depends on the project schedule and on incoming client meetings.
1. What kind of project? Remember, 9 women cannot make a baby in one month. 2. What kind of platform/technology/etc? Some coders have an affinity for a certain technology. 3. What percenteage of the hours is spent on coding and not in status meetings? If your coders are forced to do 15-hr marathons because they are spending 2-3 hrs a day on BS meetings, then you have a problem. 4. What kind of coder? There are some programmers that get into the zone big time, and they will crank code out for 10-15 hours (I used to do that back in the day, now my thresold is about 5 hours in a row) on cigarrettes, pizza and soda. 5. How is the work setup? I spent 9 months on a project that averaged 10-12 hours a day including weekends. What made it bearable? I had a TV card and digital cable fed into it. I would dial it up to Discovery channel and code away. The soothing voice of the documentary narrators kept me going for hours. Later I got promoted and got an office on the executive wing. That was a disaster! Now at my new job I have a setup similar to the one I have in my home office and sometimes I don't feel tired until I have hit the 10 hour mark (voluntarily by the way, which makes a hell of a difference).
Still, if you don't like the long hours, then leave. All that BS about the tough job market is not valid anymore. As bad as things are in DC Metro area I landed a job with same pay and 1/10th of the stress within a week of activating my Monster profile.
What is so bad about slacks and polo shirts? I like jeans like everybody else, but after 10-12 hours in front of a keyboard the jeans stretch and look like crap. At least dockers look the same way by the time you are out of the office.
Plus let's be realistic. Until you own the business, somebody else is going to set the rules. It is obvious that if you are going to spend the day laying down ethernet cables and shifting racks and PCs it is completely retarded to force you to wear slacks, but if you know that for the whole day you are going to be playing meetings jockey or sitting at your desk answering emails and phone calls, then the slacks don't hurt.
At my previous job we got rid of the dress code and let managers set it to whatever. Within operations we let the production guys wear shorts, since they were spending the whole day lugging around video equipment. Everybody else was free to wear whatever they pleased as long as:
1. It was clean. 2. It was not torn, ragged, etc. 3. If it had any text printed it was a neutral messsage ("F*ck Microsoft" was not tolerated, but "All Your Base are Belong to US" was ok, etc.) 4. You understood that with reasonable advance notice you will be required to dress up to business casual or full business attire (client visits, business trips, etc.).
When I started interviewing for my new job I noticed that new employers did not really care about wearing a suit for the interview. They told me it was too hot to make me wear a suit plus they trusted me as a professional to know when and how to dress up. My current dress code: geek casual (dockers and golf shirts). The owner could care less as long as you don't walk into the office in flip flops and a mesh top, but he cares about our investors and clients walking into the office and see us looking like total slobs.
I *almost* posted a troll along the lines of "how come when MS releases a patch the day after a big release its suddenly such a big deal..." but I think Leimy nailed it in the head. Not only the CDs were pressed already and would cost too much to replace the first production run (guess *who* pays if that happens?) but they did fix them very quickly. When MS releases a patch like that it is usually way behind everybody else.
Slashdot Mirror
SQL Server has had an XML web gateway since version 2000. You can run any query and output it as xml or have an xml template pull the query and transform the results with XSL, all without one line of server side script.
ASP.net uses XML for all the human-readable files, and the IIS in windows.net server finally uses Apache-style configuration files which are also XML.
Re-read my comment. What I meant is that he would be passing pamphlets (sp?) about birth control or why vaccines are important. They are not going to let him inject people unless there is nobody else available, which I doubt it since many missionaries are trained in basic nursing duties.
Think about it, what is a best use for a well-trained geek: Taking a computer and make it run without spending money on software, or doing clerical or menial work at a clinic?
My hat is off to you sir.
I was going to say go for something unrelated, but there's plenty of volunteers working on normal average stuff that anyone can do. If you want to do good, volunteer in something that allows you to use your specialty.
For example, if I were a linux guy, I would find one of the groups that collects old hardware, reconditions it and deploys it with Linux at places (wherever) that cannot afford new computers and/or Windows. If you can do that and train a few locals too you will be making greater impact than volunteering for the Peace corps and handing out leaflets on birth control, vaccines, etc.
The reason I recommend you to pick something that allows you to use your experience is because you don't want to be left out of touch with your field for over a year (this would literally mean professional suicide for an IT person). If you are in IT and you spend a year making old and tired hardware work, you will hone your skills while you do something good, and it will even make good resume fodder later down the road.
Me? If I was single and felt like doing so, I would find a Spanish-speaking country and volunteer to teach programming and "Nerd English" to junior high kids (those of you that, like me, are not native English speakers know what I am talking about). To me teaching is the most challenging and rewarding occupation I could think of when salary is not an issue.
I am sure they meant "public" budgeted IT projects. Either NSA, CIA, NRO or the USAF should have crossed that figure by now.
I guess I should not complain that it takes almost 2 hours to install the gimp in my iBook 600/384MB (10.2) with fink!
Regardless of the good that you want to do to society, there was a sacrifice incurred by yourself and your family. Make sure your decision balances these two factors. For example, you can publish it with a license that is open but does not give all your rights away, so people can use it for non-commercial purposes. Reserve the right to license it for commercial usage. Then go get a job with the NSA or a big security shop. EIther of these places would love (and pay top dollar) to hire a guy that has the initiative to build a better mouse trap.
You can also get a SBA loan and open a skeleton shop to substain the patent application, then use the license fees as the main revenue stream for the shop. Since yu are allowing free access to the technology for non-commercial use, nobody can bitch about it.
If you want to use the invention as resume fodder, you MUST patent it first to avoid your employer trying to steal it from you (or if working for the feds, classifying the whole damn thing).
If you GPL it first you will still keep bragging rights but you will not get any compensation for the time spent.
It was Princess Di's death. I was on shift the night it happened and it pretty much brought all news websites to their knees. That was the first time I noticed the low bandwidth version of CNN. At first I thought the site was choking because it looked like some graphics were not loading.
Still, I'll give it to Slashdot and to IRC. I spent most of 9/11 on IRC transcribing what was being reported on CNN, since for a while the site was pretty much useless. A bunch of us where also taking screen captures and posting them online so people could see the horror. I still have captures of the first flyover of the Pentagon, which is less than 10 miles from my office.
My colo is at JC and we took a hit yesterday. Tech support later told me UUNET had said there was a DDOS going on and it was dragging us down. I wonder if he was feeding me a line of B.S...
1. the link was slashdotted within minutes. That is why I started with "I hope..."
:-)
2. My post started at 2, probably some karma voodoo.
3. Still, I think the "informative" mod up was not fair, but that has been taken care of already, hehe.
4. I still stand by my statement: that Maxell is a piece of crap
...that sells for about $30-$35 on CompUSA. I got one and it is a piece of crap (DOA, Mickey Mouse buttons, terrible cradle design...). The wife later bought herself a MS wireless optical blue which was a lot better (read: did not die after 2 days) than the Maxell. Later she got a MS Office keyboard bundle at Costco (it was so cheap that the mouse was literally free) that came with a MS Wireless optical Explorer, which is what I use now. Great mouse and it does not eat up batteries.
At my previous job I used three different IBM ThinkPads. These are great, even if they are expensive as hell and very very heavy. But they worked fine.
:-)
At my new job (I am employee #9 on a 11-person company) everybody has macs except me. Since I am the web developer and the code is in asp I inherited two Windows 2000 boxes. I had been dying to switch to mac since January, and this was the last excuse I needed to make the jump.
I got a killer deal for an iBook 600 with 256MB RAM (already upped to 384), airport and MS Office v:X retail. The whole bundle cost me less than a retail iBook 700 with 128MB of ram and no airport.
I am very happy with OS 10.2 and I have been able to do all my ASP work with just BBEdit Pro and the MS Remote Desktop client. I can manage my freeBSD and Linux servers thru the terminal without any theatrics. My friends that used to make fun of me for even considering the mac are now changing their minds when they see how easy it has been for me to make the switch. Plus the iBook is so light I don't feel it on my backpack.
I am of course counting down the days for when I can afford to get a Titanium Powerbook
I decided to switch from mirc (shareware) to xchat (GPL) on Windows 2000 and XP so I can run the same client in Linux and Windows (same reason I run Mozilla if I am jumping continuosly between Windows and Linux: be familiar with one app that runs the same regardless of which PC I am sitting in front of).
:-(
One of the few real frustrations I have had while switching to Mac OS X is that I cannot figure out how to get xchat running on XDarwin
And putty just rocks. It is my SSH client of choice for Windows.
I started to witness this decay while in engineering school, 1987-1992. Things were pretty lousy back then, I don't want to imagine how worse they are now.
I was probably in one of the last classes that actually learned drafting first, then CAD later (this is at the School of Engineering, University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez). Drafting was a pain but it really taught us the beauty of CAD/CAM and not to ever take it for granted. Same for numerical analysis: numerical analysis becomes a thing of beauty after you have spent two years getting HAMMERED with advanced calculus courses.
Now every mickey mouse NT admin is calling himself an engineer. It is a shame. Engineers are supposed to be able to build stuff, to apply science to resolve problems, but we are raising a new generation that is being trained to use software packages and that's about it.
Of course, generalizations are not good, and I am in awe of the next generation of hard core programmers that are being exposed to real programming languages and real world problems like building a kernel, not us that were writing stupid little Fortran (WATFIV!) programs on a freaking VAX.
Since when $4000-$6000 became prosumer range? The only product you could possibly buy at that price range and still call it "prosumer" with a straight face is a beat up race car to use on weekend races.
Prosumer is actually on the $1000-$1200 range. ust go to an electronics store and see how many camcorders. SLRs and digicams cross over that price range.
Not a hell of a lot.
Mine died over its first weekend (bad firewire plug, so it would not recharge). I took it back to the store and it took longer to type into their system the exchange (which requires a floor manager to override the restocking fee) than what it took for them to decide it was broken and they were going to give me a new one.
10 minutes waiting on the genius bar til it was my turn.
About 45 seconds of testing.
15 minutes of paperwork.
So no complaints here. As for the iPod itself, it rocks so hard I can't describe it. It is one of these things that is just done perfect. Something better comes along and you could care less because yours works exactly as you want it. As it is right now you could come up with an iPod killer at half the price and twice the connection bandwidth and that will not make me swap my iPod for something else.
As for the battery, do you really need 20+ hours of battery on one charge? What we need is something like the infoLithium batteries that my Sony DSC S70 camera uses. The camera always knows exactly how much power it has left based on your current usage. The iPod has a battery icon with 4 segments and that's it.
I use mine on the road about 2 hours per day, and I recharge it maybe every 3-4 days. I never leave it connected to the iBook, instead I connect it just to sync and recharge it with the power plug for the firewire cable. So far I have run out of power once, when I left it in the backpack over a weekend without making sure I had locked it. Seems my kid kept walking over the backpack and kept turning it on. Ouch.
I don't think it is off-topic. You are 100% right. The "tough job market" is for all the wannabes that exploited the dot-bomb demand for tech workers. Back in '97 I remember the cottage industry around DC dealing with NT training. These people aimed their training at people that were switching careers, not at IT professionals that were trying to improve their knowledge. A friend of mine did the MCSE thing and he used to find recruiters right outside the training centers. It was just insane!
The people that are really qualified and have the experience to back them up should do fine. The wannabes that did the dummies book thing will collect their unemployment and when it expires then they are screwed.
When I got hired at my current job the president (who is married to the CEO, this is a small shop!) told me I was one of 300+ applicants and that they spent 6 weeks interviewing people because everybody that came to them was a dot-bomb wannabe. Because of this he forced me to take some kind of quiz in Ansi SQL, which even after so many years dealing with SQL Server and Oracle I nearly flunked it (but did better than everybody else). I still did not believe him on the 300 applicants until I found a network folder with ALL 300 resumes. Amazing, out of the 300 there were maybe 15 people worth interviewing.
This is what you need to do:
1. Sign it.
2. Collect whatever you can get them to pay you. If they pay by check, run to the freaking bank and cash that check ASAP.
3. Run like hell and get on with your life.
I was a hair short from being in your position. The day I was going to be told I was in the layoffs list I went to interview elsewhere. I went back to my office not knowing if I still had a job. The CEO told me she almost canned me but decided to leave me stay at the last second as long as I would take over the work of two expensive consultants. I said suuuure. 48 hours later I had my offer elsewhere, gave them 1-week notice (first time ever I give less than 2) and ran like hell.
I did not even sign a consultant agreement. Instead I told them that since I was a "nice guy" I was going to stay as a part-time employee. Instead of a $85/hour consultant I volunteered to be a $30/hr part time employee (they laid off 20% of all employees, and those of us that survived got cut our salaries by 20%). Why? Because the company is going down and they are going to screw all consultants, but they do not mess with payroll. I would rather get paid $30 now than have the $84/hr negotiated down to $20, and that is after 2-3 months of threatening to sue for non-payment.
Just take the money and run. Get on with your life. All that talk about the though job market is B.S. The same day I interviewed for my present job one of my friends got laid off at noon. At 2 PM he went to interview elsewhere. His offer arrived two days later, 4 hours ahead of mine.
I was thinking along the lines of an encrypted format. What about a magic gate memory stick? Is magic gate just a copy protection or can it be tied up to a certain device?
I had been bugging the wife since January to let me buy a mac. First an iBook and then I got greedy and started pushing for a Titanium powerbook.
She did not budge for months.
Then two weeks ago she made me an offer I could not refuse: I could either:
1. Buy an iBook now, and later, "maybe", she would get me the Ti Powerbook. Or,
2. Not buy an iBook now, and later, "big maybe", she would get me the Ti Powerbook.
My reply was "duh."
I actually lucked out big time. I got a 600MHZ iBook with a retail copy of MS Office V:x (over $400), 256 MB ram (that's a $70+ factory upgrade) and Airport ($100) for $1450. And the seller was nice enough to pay for the 2-day air shipping. The laptop was pristine and I absolutely adore it. And I am the guy that usually starts his rants with this disclosure: I am a card-carrying Microsoft-dot-whore.
Yet I am having the time of my life. The laptop is tiny and really light, so I don't feel it on my backpack. The Airport card works great with the D-link AP I picked up on eBay for $80 the same day. I also got an iPod, which rocks for my daily metro rail commute.
Later I bought BBEdit Pro ($79) to help me with one of the last things that keeps me tied up to Windows: my addiction to EditPlus.
The 12-in screen is perfect, and at the office I just plug it into a 19-in monitor, so no complaints here (even at 12-in the screen is plain beautiful, much nicer than my last two ThinkPads).
Of course, I am looking forward to the Titanium Powerbook, but I am having the time of my life with my iBook. Had I dediced to buy it retail (which would be 700 MHZ instead of 600 MHZ) I would had paid $1500 just for the laptop with 128MB of ram. I would have had to buy Ms Office for about $450 (I am still shocked that it was an original, I expected the guy to screw me and send me a CDR) and the Airport card for $100.
I can only tell you to forget about the obsolescence threat. Macs retain their value really well. Notice how you can buy a $15,000 Dodge and after 2 years its value drops by half, but a VW may lose only a couple grand in the same amount of time. Macs are built very nicely, I installed Jaguar on a blueberry mac G3 and it ran just fine. It was not a scorcher but it was more usable than any windows PC that was built at that time and is still lying around.
The most pleasing part of having the mac is not having to thinker with it. Even as solid as XP is when compared to 98 (yeah, it is very relative but you have to acknowledge XP only sucks half as much as 98), I always felt like XP is a tweak in progress. Its like having a kickass muscle car that you have to go every morning, open the hood and check the carbs for minor adjustments. The mac runs like a car with a solid state ignition. It just runs.
I submitted my switch story to Apple. I told them I still sleep 4 hours a night, because the hours I used to waste keeping my PC running are now spent doing stuff on the mac.
Get your mac, use it for 6 months and if Apple has issued something better then decide if it is worth the trouble to grab the new one and sell the old one. I will not be selling mine when I get the Powerbook, since the wife is already starting to show interest in the iBook, and once my little boy starts school I might get him an eMac.
Here's a different perspective on planned obsolecence:
I bought a Sony DSC-S70 Cybershot digital camera in Summer 2000. At the time it was the best (screw you Nikon) 3.3 megapix camera, and it had a Carl Zeiss lens that was just beautiful. A month or so ago I realized my trustworthy camera is already 2 years old, which would make it a dinosaur. Or not? 2 years later I still have people praise my photos, and the automatic reaction to my photos is always "what kind of camera did you use? These pictures are really sharp!"
I toyed with the idea of upgrading to the DSC-S85 but realized my camera is just great and there is no reason for me to upgrade. Maybe you will get your mac and like it so much that when the next one comes up you won't feel like you were left behind. Just buy the fastest one you can afford and do not pay Apple prices for ram, that is what eBay is for! I got my 256MB stick for $46 instead of the $150 Apple wanted.
3,000. Problem is their managers at Kinkos, Starbucks and Target would not give them the time-off for the interview.
Over 10 years ago, while still in Engineering school, 3M sent me a sample of a plastic that they wanted to sell for covering ATMs and computer screens. The screen was only visible if your axis of vision was perpendicular to the horizontal axis of the plastic. If you veered by more than 10-15 degrees it would turn completely black. The effect was only left-right, it had no influence if for example somebody stood behind you and peeked over your shoulder.
1. Programmer
2. Project Manager
3. Tech writer.
4. CTO/CIO
5. Instructional designer (or subject matter expert on your field)
Pretty much anything that does not require you to be a day-to-day first line supervisor for a team. Project management is possible since you are running the project, not the people.
At my previous job we had all these people telecommuting. The CTO telecommuted from Rhode Island to Maryland ahd he was pretty damn good at it. He travelled to our office once a month, spent two days in meetings and then back home for another month.
Half the programmers were telecommuters. Only one person out of 10 abused the telecommuting, the others played it by the book. They liked the concept so much that they did not dare goof it up.
Project managers do very well as part time telecommuters. It all depends on the project schedule and on incoming client meetings.
1. What kind of project?
Remember, 9 women cannot make a baby in one month.
2. What kind of platform/technology/etc?
Some coders have an affinity for a certain technology.
3. What percenteage of the hours is spent on coding and not in status meetings?
If your coders are forced to do 15-hr marathons because they are spending 2-3 hrs a day on BS meetings, then you have a problem.
4. What kind of coder?
There are some programmers that get into the zone big time, and they will crank code out for 10-15 hours (I used to do that back in the day, now my thresold is about 5 hours in a row) on cigarrettes, pizza and soda.
5. How is the work setup?
I spent 9 months on a project that averaged 10-12 hours a day including weekends. What made it bearable? I had a TV card and digital cable fed into it. I would dial it up to Discovery channel and code away. The soothing voice of the documentary narrators kept me going for hours.
Later I got promoted and got an office on the executive wing. That was a disaster! Now at my new job I have a setup similar to the one I have in my home office and sometimes I don't feel tired until I have hit the 10 hour mark (voluntarily by the way, which makes a hell of a difference).
Still, if you don't like the long hours, then leave. All that BS about the tough job market is not valid anymore. As bad as things are in DC Metro area I landed a job with same pay and 1/10th of the stress within a week of activating my Monster profile.
What is so bad about slacks and polo shirts? I like jeans like everybody else, but after 10-12 hours in front of a keyboard the jeans stretch and look like crap. At least dockers look the same way by the time you are out of the office.
Plus let's be realistic. Until you own the business, somebody else is going to set the rules. It is obvious that if you are going to spend the day laying down ethernet cables and shifting racks and PCs it is completely retarded to force you to wear slacks, but if you know that for the whole day you are going to be playing meetings jockey or sitting at your desk answering emails and phone calls, then the slacks don't hurt.
At my previous job we got rid of the dress code and let managers set it to whatever. Within operations we let the production guys wear shorts, since they were spending the whole day lugging around video equipment. Everybody else was free to wear whatever they pleased as long as:
1. It was clean.
2. It was not torn, ragged, etc.
3. If it had any text printed it was a neutral messsage ("F*ck Microsoft" was not tolerated, but "All Your Base are Belong to US" was ok, etc.)
4. You understood that with reasonable advance notice you will be required to dress up to business casual or full business attire (client visits, business trips, etc.).
When I started interviewing for my new job I noticed that new employers did not really care about wearing a suit for the interview. They told me it was too hot to make me wear a suit plus they trusted me as a professional to know when and how to dress up. My current dress code: geek casual (dockers and golf shirts). The owner could care less as long as you don't walk into the office in flip flops and a mesh top, but he cares about our investors and clients walking into the office and see us looking like total slobs.
And yeah, I play golf too.
I *almost* posted a troll along the lines of "how come when MS releases a patch the day after a big release its suddenly such a big deal..." but I think Leimy nailed it in the head. Not only the CDs were pressed already and would cost too much to replace the first production run (guess *who* pays if that happens?) but they did fix them very quickly. When MS releases a patch like that it is usually way behind everybody else.