I get the feeling the thing uses Linux so you want it to succeed so much. This guy doesn't like it and makes some perfectly valid points as to why not and you're ready to thrash him.
I wouldn't say I thrashed him at all. Actually wrote him a nice email, too, arguing my points. In short, I think that he basically said "Stay away from version1.0 unless you're an early adopter", which is not exactly brain science.
Syncing to Outlook or anything else on a PC is not a pipe dream - it should be the one task this thing does best
That is your personal metric, not the world's. I never sync mine, ever. I back it up, yes, but I never "trade" updates between a desktop application and my PDA. I play games. I handle appointments, addresses, and so on. Time and expense tracking. I don't even need development tools, so I won't try to play the geek card. But I bet the majority of your home users never truly sync, either -- I think they just back up.
64MB is pathetic for an MP3 player.
A quick scan of Amazon shows a large number of 64M players still on the market, so it's far from pathetic. They average about $100-$150. You're getting that for free with this device, so take it off the $500 you paid and now the PDA side is only $350, which makes it cheaper than a Palm515.
As I said in my original post, I'm not holding my breath, but I am most definitely an early adopter and hardcore geek, and I will evangelize this thing just like I evangelized my Palm when it first came out and my Blackberry now. It's what I can do. I can't buy a few hundred thousand of them. But I can hopefully influence a few people who can also influence a few people...
Recruit Einsteins? How old is this book? Who the hell is recruiting anybody anymore?:)
Exactly how much of a cocky bastard does it make me if I tell my boss we should get a copy of this book?
Didn't seebs write something about managing hackers (and/or herding cats) that has much the same advice, has been around longer, and is more "truer to the cause" since it was written by one of us instead of a bunch of management professionals who claim to understand us?
Is there a chapter about how we still want beanbag chairs and free soda?
I get the feeling that guys like this start by saying "Well it's not Palm or Wince, therefore I expect it to suck." And then they just fulfill their own expectations by being too critical of things that they knew Palm and Wince did better (like the whole sync to Outlook thing). Is it possible to look at it from a different angle?
The keyboard is more clumsy than a foldout one, true. But it's comparable to a Blackberry (I have both). I think it's more a case that it's more difficult to hold the thing while typing than it is to hold a Blackberry.
64Meg will allow it to serve as a fair MP3 player. Maybe it's just that a WSJ guy doesn't want one of those.
It's got both SD AND CF meaning that you can bump the storage with SD while leaving CF open for some cool peripherals (like modem, wireless, or net connection). Personally I'm drooling over the idea of having a small toolbox of CF cards that will get me net connected in whatever the most convenient way is (particularly that net socket where I can sit in a meeting and plug myself into the T1 at work).
True, most regular users will never care about Linux. BUT, if you were to track the number of apps for Palm, versus Wince, versus this thing, I bet you'll find that the number for this thing will grow much faster because of the easy porting. Hancom already has a full office suite for it in evaluation stages (something that Palm still is barely succeeding at). And does anyone other that MS themselves succeed at porting their stuff to Wince? Which version of Wince:)?
The average Palm still does not have the screen resolution that this thing does, which leads to a much better interface as well as cool browsing with Opera.
Yes, it is bigger and heavier than a Palm. Personally I don't care, given that it is still drastically smaller than a laptop (and the comparison is becoming more valid because this thing is powerful enough to run Emacs and a Java compiler, so I really can do work on it). I remember when the PalmV first came out, at the same time as teh III, and everybody was like "What's cool about the V?" and the answer was "Lighter." That's it. And then everybody went and wrapped theirs in that big metal case to protect it.
I hope it takes off, I really do. I'm not holding my breath. But I'll support it where I can. If it can survive for 6months or so I think that the number of solid apps for it will take hold and it will become a very viable choice for people.
Here's what I got out of it...
on
Speed Reading?
·
· Score: 2
What I got out of it is that the structure of the book can tell you alot. When reading a novel, don't you find yourself drawn toward the dialogue sections, rather than the lengthy paragraphs describing the scene of the crime?
Flip through your tech book very fast. See what the book is made of -- lots of picture? Small font? Now, go back and do it again at a rate of about 1 second/page or so. Look for headings. Figures. Code examples. Don't read any of the actual text body. This will give you a feeling for the pace of the book -- such as, how many paragraphs on average will I be expected to read before I see a code example? It's not a specific measure, it's just a feeling.
Once you've done this, look at the table of contents. You'll know more about the chapters than you did before. Choose the chapters you want to read, based on what you've scanned. If you scanned a chapter and didn't see any code examples or headings that caught your eye (literally), skip it if you like.
When reading free form text, put your finger under the word you are reading, and follow along. Keep the two matched. If you want to read faster, move your finger faster. Try to move your finger at a constant pace, though, so if you speed up, stay sped up, don't "skim" (ironic, isn't it?) and then slow down at the good parts. NEVER STOP AND GO BACK. If you feel like you've missed something, read it again in some other pass. Get through the whole chapter (or logical break). Then if you want, go do it again.
Not exactly what people think about when they think speed reading, but it's what the first few lessons were about when I tried it. And the above is the only thing I use regularly. I never developed that thing they do where they just whip a hand straight down the page and then flip. But, what I do use works better than my old method of eyes glazing over and turning pages periodically before realizing that I'm not paying attention to what was on the last 3 pages.
I was at JavaONE when they gave out hugely discounted Palm V's as a way to promote Java on the Palm. That was years ago. People still aren't writing lots of apps for it (I have heard about some dedicated, internal applications where you can give your people a pre-configured Palm w/Java). Know why I think that is? Why hasn't Palm managed to put the JVM into the machine by default? If the device was inherently able to run Java, and I could just send out JAR files, I think it would be a huge win because your typical customer doesn't really care about the difference between an executable, a data file, an interpreted bytecode, etc... But if for any application I want to make I have to include a whole lot of junk that is just going to confuse them, that stinks. Also, it makes my app smaller. Imagine the subliminal message that's sent out when you say "In order to run my 100k program you need to download and install this 5 meg program." (sizes made up, of course). It makes people think that your program is tiny, and that this other "support" code thingie is going to be wasting all of your precious memory.
I wonder if the introduction of Java as a supported development platform for Palm would help them with market share? I mean it's not like there's a shortage of applications for the Palm now. What's the big hook from Palm's perspective to do this? I can understand why I as a Java programmer want it, but why would Palm care?
I have a Blackberry. I let work give me one primarily because I wanted to write Java apps for it. They have a Java environment (which is beta or prerelease or some such), and they have documentation which says "And in order to move your java apps to the blackberry you need such-n-such version of the application loader." To date I cannot determine if this app loader exists. Every attempt I've made to look into it results in the same -- "Run it in the simulator." But until I can actually put a Java app on the device, the fact that it's built on Java or not is useless.
Seriously, I understand why people need the right to post anonymously. But how anonymous? I've never understood why the Slashdot crew can't say "Everybody has to register, but you can choose to post anonymously." That way if you mess around, they still know who you are. Are the people who demand the right to post anonymously demanding to be anonymous just to the other readers, or to the administration as well?
If it's the former, then make it so that the only people that can post anonymously are paying customers. Sure as hell cancel out the trolls in a hurry. How many people will be willing to pay for the right to be an asshole?
Lowering the number of trolls lowers the garbage on the site. Which lowers bandwidth. Which lowers operating cost. Which lowers the number of ads that the rest of the good guys have to see.
So you end up with three categories of people : anonymous and not paying, for whom the site is read-only. Registered but not paying, who see ads, but can also post as themselves. Registered and paying, who don't see ads and can post either as themselves, or anonymously.
Professor of mine told me the story about having to travel to a conference on the Statistics and Science for Social Studies, or "Four S" for short. He called the hotel to confirm his registration for the Four S meeting, and they asked for his credit card, which he gave them. after he hung up he thought that weird, because he had already given them the credit card once before. So he called back to check and asked if he was confirmed for the right conference. They said absolutely, he was all booked for the Society for Statistical Sexual Studies.
Swear to god. He said he had to seriously think about which conference he wanted to attend.
When I first joined the team, hired by a friend of mine, we established what documentation would be used to define software projects. We came up with the "Business Functional Document", or BFD, which hopefully everybody knows also stands for "big f'ing deal". he got the expression into exactly *1* meeting before a marketing guy said "You can't call it that." Oh, well.
Just today I learned that my group is called Application Architecture, or AA for short. "Hi, my name's Duane, and I'm an architect." "Hi, Duane!!" I'm seriously thinking about calling my first white paper the 12 steps to web services.
True story that's not a bad acronym but we find it funny -- we used to be on Shared Enterprise Applications, or SEA. That group got disbanded and we are now Application Engineering Services, or AES -- SEA backwards. So the joke is that our mission statement is to do the exact opposite of what we did 6 months ago.
Interesting that you don't mention Tibco? I'm not claiming to know much about it's quality, but I'm at a bank and two competing architecture groups (after recent merger) are fighting the pros and cons of MQSeries versus Tibco so I can only assume that Tibco's got something going for it otherwise the fight would have been over quickly.
I had to call UPS once to complain about one of those yellow sticky notes they leave, and it said "Please speak your tracking number." This number is like 10 digits long, both alpha and numeric. Sure enough, it got 100% the first time I said it!
duane
(Note, I still don't like them. The package I was complaining about had been left in a puddle near my garage, and the guy wrote "delivered at front door" on the slip.)
Amen, brother! There are exactly two reasons right now why I'm not using my Rocket as much as I should:
Gemstar royally sucks, and has ruined the market. They killed the free library. They try to determine who can publish for their device. Go to fictionwise.com and count the number of new titles coming out that say "Available in every format known to man except Rocket."
I've taken to reading more stuff on the Palm. Why? Because the Palm fits in a pocket and I always have it with me. I have to consciously say "Ok, I'm taking the Rocket with me so I can read" which does not fly well in a corporate meeting, or the men's room. But the PDA is always there and I can choose to check my calendar, take notes, or read Larry Niven's Crashlander at the push of a button.
Poormojo.org is a great source for free stuff in Palm doc format. There are enough tools out there to convert back to text/html, and then down to rb format, that one of these days I should really write a converter.:) The Rocket is still better for times when I'm reading something for enjoyment because I specifically want to take the time to read, not random freebies I picked up just so I have something on me at all times. The Rocket is clearly the better device when it comes to screen size and appearance (the backlighting is wonderful).
Imagine it, they make every comment available, with sender's name. The next day, everybody that posted an anti-MS comment finds their copy of XP stops working.:)
How about ebook versions of dead tree releases? It would be great to have a 1000 page tome on the shelf, but a "quick reference" on your Palm. Many books have tri-fold perforated cards that you are expected to tear out of the cover and carry with you. Take that to the logical next step -- provide a small ebook version of that info. And since you're no longer limited to the trifold card, you can put as much or as little as you want in it.
A book with fantastic integration to its website. Not just a CD with source code. Something that alerts me to updates. Allows me to bookmark stuff that I've played with. Hell, provide a pseudo-simulator that will not only show me source code but show me what it looks like running, or in my IDE or something. Ideally, let me login and personalize my online book experience, up to an including being able to read major pieces of the book online. (Solve the "you have to buy the dead tree version first" problem and you'll be a rich man.)
Focused code, but smaller snippets. A book on ecommerce is cool, but then the whole book is "20 chapters, where every chapter builds on a mythical bike shop!" Super, in the beginning, but I don't run a bike shop, and by chapter 20 it's getting near impossible for me eto make use of the examples unless I want to cart around the other 19 chapters worth of examples with me.
Books that know the difference between "Here's an introductory taste of everything" and "Here's an in depth, everything you need to know guide to one thing" and know which they want to be. How many slashdot reviews end up with "The chapters on X were good, but then he just barely mentioned Y?" If you don't plan on talking about Y, then don't call the book "X and Y for Geeks", call it "The X Bible." There's an audience for both kinds of books, and if you sit in the middle someplace, you'll inevitably make both groups grumpy.
I don't understand why it has to be Microsoft or Linux ruling the desktop, personally. Imagine that tomorrow, Microsoft ceases to exist, and all desktops run Linux. 99% of the world aren't programmers. They are dependent on what Linux brings to the table, so the whole "if it doesn't exist, build it yourself" argument doesn't fly for them.
And one of them raises his hand and says "But, I just don't like this. can I have something different?"
The answer would be no, wouldn't it? Wouldn't that suck as much as the current microsoftopoly?
I don't care if my officemates or my parents or my wife runs Linux. I want the choice to run Linux (and continue to interact with them). I want Linux to be allowed by Microsoft to generate a reasonable enough market share that software vendors work with us, produce drivers, etc.. That's it. I'm not interested in replacing one monopoly with another one.
a) I think your "50 years to the Turing Test" is funny because that's what Turing said 50 years ago and most experts would agree we're no way near close. So in 50 years people could just repeat the same prediction again.:)
b)You're not taking into account expotential increase in computer power. Read Kurzweil's books ("The Age of Spiritual Machines"). He shows the math for why Moore's Law is continuing to work, but over a shorter loop (i.e. 2 years, 18 months, 1 year...) He then extends that into the future and if I remember, within 100 years he's got nano technology, and other really far out ideas. Within 150 years you've just got good voice recognition.
I'd see if you can get yourself in the door by doing other work for them besides embedded work. Do they have some sort of GUI front end that goes with their device? Diagnostic tools? Or even in house development aids? If you can get any job working for a company you like, your odds are better that eventually you'll get a chance to work on some of the embedded stuff, especially once they know you've got some knowledge of the subject (assuming in that degree of yours you got some embedded experience:)).
If you are both the producer and consumer of the XML messages, then you could get away with whatever compression scheme you liked (I always envisioned something like mapping the DTD to numeric values, since the DTD describes all tags and attributes you will use), and then converting down that way. Figure for every tag that tags up like 14 characters, you replace it with an integer (or even byte) representing what tag it is, and perhaps something for the length of the field. My point is that you could roll whatever you like if you know who is on the other end.
The problem of course is that if you control both the producer and consumer you're greatly limiting the applicability of XML in the first place. Just yesterday I explained to my boss that one of the advantages to XML is for cases when you have 10 people who want your data, but you can't dictate was software they use...AND, 6 months from now, 10 other people who you haven't even met yet are going to want your data too. If you're in that boat, and you create any sort of compression scheme, then you're in trouble. If you're not, then you may not need XML at all (at least, not for moving your data around).
Perhaps you're hoping that there will be some compression module that becomes a standard part of XML, so that you can safely say "Anybody who is able to parse my XML message would also be able to decompress it"? Good luck. Even if that did happen, it would take ages for all of the parsers out there to get up to date.
What you'll probably find is that something like SOAP or WSDL will have a compression component. But in that case it's ok, because both the client and server sides of WSDL that do the marshalling/unmarshalling will be provided for you by your tools (such as BEA WebLogic). Think about what CORBA IDL was like -- you just write the interface, and then both client and server stubs are automatically generated for you. In that case, it's perfectly reasonable to expect that some compression/decompression code could be written in to the code automatically.
IBM wasn't only into hardware -- look at OS/2 as a good example. Microsoft in short order found themselves in a position to waltz IBM down one path, get them to invest all kinds of resources and press on it, and then say "Oh yeah, by the way, we're gonna go ahead and bail on this, and create our own competing product with a full suite of apps that we've been working on right along. Surprise."
Since the whole architecture of the PC was open, there was no way that IBM would be a monopoly in that area. Therefore it's possible to assume that they could have chosen to set themselves up as a OS monopoly. But Microsoft did it instead.
Don't dwell too much on this going on for years in the courts. The best thing that can come of this would be similar to what happened in the 80's with IBM -- that the government and anybody else possible shines as much attention on Microsoft for as long as possible, slowing their monopolisitic practices long enough for the competition to catch up. Unfortunately for IBM the one that caught up to them was Microsoft:-/.
It's already happening, and will continue. Have patience.
Older candidates bring a number of excellent skills to an interview, even if their tech might not be the latest and greatest:
maturity
seniority, leadership
variety of experience
strong work ethic
This guy has his own business? Great, then he probably understands budgets, deadlines, resource management, and all kinds of other good stuff that any manager wishes his employees understood. He won't necessarily be *doing* those things when he wants an entry level spot, but he can appreciate what it means when his boss says "I understand that you want to do it this way, but you tell me that will take 8 weeks and I only have budget for 3 weeks, so do it the other way." Many of the hotshot young programmers who don't grok business will often shoot back "Then just change the budget" or something equally clueless. The experienced ones will say "You got it, boss" and make it happen in 3 weeks.
Remember too, those young kids that will put in the long hours are also the ones that will leave your company in a heartbeat the day someone else comes along and promises to make them rich on stock options. The old timers are often the ones who remember what it's like to have loyalty to their career and the people around them, and not always the quick buck. Managers would kill for that.
The thing I love about computers is that, being digital, I can apply a simple philosophy : my domain is deterministic, therefore it is possible to not only develop a set of variables that consistently recreate the problems, but to tweak those variables until I determine the cause. (Yes, I know that embedded systems, concurrent programming, and other fields that I'm not into can't say this quite so cut and dried, but you get the idea. 99.9% of the time it applies).
In a car, these things don't always apply. Electricity is intermittent? Perhaps, during a particularly heavy rain, sometimes water gets onto a loose wire and creates a short. And on and on.
Reminds me of the time we were kids and drove to the store with a friend of ours and his little old Italian dad. The car wouldn't start when we came out of the store. So our friend hopped in the driver's seat, and the dad pulled out a hammer, opened the hood, and whacked something. 'Try it now, Freddy!" he yelled. Nothing. Whack, whack. "Again!" Nothing. Whack, whack. Whack! "One more time, I've hit every fucking thing in there." And it started.
I figure I'm getting one of these for Christmas, because I put it on the list and my parents said "What the hell is a BIO Bug and where would we get one?" I figure it will be a neat conversation piece at work (hey, I'm 32:)). But I need more local geek friends to get these things so we can battle them. I hope I can get some fun out of it by itself, butI'm not sure. The article gives me hope, though.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't say I thrashed him at all. Actually wrote him a nice email, too, arguing my points. In short, I think that he basically said "Stay away from version1.0 unless you're an early adopter", which is not exactly brain science.
Syncing to Outlook or anything else on a PC is not a pipe dream - it should be the one task this thing does best
That is your personal metric, not the world's. I never sync mine, ever. I back it up, yes, but I never "trade" updates between a desktop application and my PDA. I play games. I handle appointments, addresses, and so on. Time and expense tracking. I don't even need development tools, so I won't try to play the geek card. But I bet the majority of your home users never truly sync, either -- I think they just back up.
64MB is pathetic for an MP3 player.
A quick scan of Amazon shows a large number of 64M players still on the market, so it's far from pathetic. They average about $100-$150. You're getting that for free with this device, so take it off the $500 you paid and now the PDA side is only $350, which makes it cheaper than a Palm515.
As I said in my original post, I'm not holding my breath, but I am most definitely an early adopter and hardcore geek, and I will evangelize this thing just like I evangelized my Palm when it first came out and my Blackberry now. It's what I can do. I can't buy a few hundred thousand of them. But I can hopefully influence a few people who can also influence a few people...
- The keyboard is more clumsy than a foldout one, true. But it's comparable to a Blackberry (I have both). I think it's more a case that it's more difficult to hold the thing while typing than it is to hold a Blackberry.
- 64Meg will allow it to serve as a fair MP3 player. Maybe it's just that a WSJ guy doesn't want one of those.
- It's got both SD AND CF meaning that you can bump the storage with SD while leaving CF open for some cool peripherals (like modem, wireless, or net connection). Personally I'm drooling over the idea of having a small toolbox of CF cards that will get me net connected in whatever the most convenient way is (particularly that net socket where I can sit in a meeting and plug myself into the T1 at work).
- True, most regular users will never care about Linux. BUT, if you were to track the number of apps for Palm, versus Wince, versus this thing, I bet you'll find that the number for this thing will grow much faster because of the easy porting. Hancom already has a full office suite for it in evaluation stages (something that Palm still is barely succeeding at). And does anyone other that MS themselves succeed at porting their stuff to Wince? Which version of Wince
:)?
- The average Palm still does not have the screen resolution that this thing does, which leads to a much better interface as well as cool browsing with Opera.
- Yes, it is bigger and heavier than a Palm. Personally I don't care, given that it is still drastically smaller than a laptop (and the comparison is becoming more valid because this thing is powerful enough to run Emacs and a Java compiler, so I really can do work on it). I remember when the PalmV first came out, at the same time as teh III, and everybody was like "What's cool about the V?" and the answer was "Lighter." That's it. And then everybody went and wrapped theirs in that big metal case to protect it.
I hope it takes off, I really do. I'm not holding my breath. But I'll support it where I can. If it can survive for 6months or so I think that the number of solid apps for it will take hold and it will become a very viable choice for people.Flip through your tech book very fast. See what the book is made of -- lots of picture? Small font? Now, go back and do it again at a rate of about 1 second/page or so. Look for headings. Figures. Code examples. Don't read any of the actual text body. This will give you a feeling for the pace of the book -- such as, how many paragraphs on average will I be expected to read before I see a code example? It's not a specific measure, it's just a feeling.
Once you've done this, look at the table of contents. You'll know more about the chapters than you did before. Choose the chapters you want to read, based on what you've scanned. If you scanned a chapter and didn't see any code examples or headings that caught your eye (literally), skip it if you like.
When reading free form text, put your finger under the word you are reading, and follow along. Keep the two matched. If you want to read faster, move your finger faster. Try to move your finger at a constant pace, though, so if you speed up, stay sped up, don't "skim" (ironic, isn't it?) and then slow down at the good parts. NEVER STOP AND GO BACK. If you feel like you've missed something, read it again in some other pass. Get through the whole chapter (or logical break). Then if you want, go do it again.
Not exactly what people think about when they think speed reading, but it's what the first few lessons were about when I tried it. And the above is the only thing I use regularly. I never developed that thing they do where they just whip a hand straight down the page and then flip. But, what I do use works better than my old method of eyes glazing over and turning pages periodically before realizing that I'm not paying attention to what was on the last 3 pages.
I wonder if the introduction of Java as a supported development platform for Palm would help them with market share? I mean it's not like there's a shortage of applications for the Palm now. What's the big hook from Palm's perspective to do this? I can understand why I as a Java programmer want it, but why would Palm care?
Somebody tell me I've missed something obvious!
Hey, it's been about 12 years since I heard him tell the story, I figured I was bound to get a few of the words wrong. :)
If it's the former, then make it so that the only people that can post anonymously are paying customers. Sure as hell cancel out the trolls in a hurry. How many people will be willing to pay for the right to be an asshole?
Lowering the number of trolls lowers the garbage on the site. Which lowers bandwidth. Which lowers operating cost. Which lowers the number of ads that the rest of the good guys have to see.
So you end up with three categories of people : anonymous and not paying, for whom the site is read-only. Registered but not paying, who see ads, but can also post as themselves. Registered and paying, who don't see ads and can post either as themselves, or anonymously.
Swear to god. He said he had to seriously think about which conference he wanted to attend.
Just today I learned that my group is called Application Architecture, or AA for short. "Hi, my name's Duane, and I'm an architect." "Hi, Duane!!" I'm seriously thinking about calling my first white paper the 12 steps to web services.
True story that's not a bad acronym but we find it funny -- we used to be on Shared Enterprise Applications, or SEA. That group got disbanded and we are now Application Engineering Services, or AES -- SEA backwards. So the joke is that our mission statement is to do the exact opposite of what we did 6 months ago.
Interesting that you don't mention Tibco? I'm not claiming to know much about it's quality, but I'm at a bank and two competing architecture groups (after recent merger) are fighting the pros and cons of MQSeries versus Tibco so I can only assume that Tibco's got something going for it otherwise the fight would have been over quickly.
duane
(Note, I still don't like them. The package I was complaining about had been left in a puddle near my garage, and the guy wrote "delivered at front door" on the slip.)
- Gemstar royally sucks, and has ruined the market. They killed the free library. They try to determine who can publish for their device. Go to fictionwise.com and count the number of new titles coming out that say "Available in every format known to man except Rocket."
- I've taken to reading more stuff on the Palm. Why? Because the Palm fits in a pocket and I always have it with me. I have to consciously say "Ok, I'm taking the Rocket with me so I can read" which does not fly well in a corporate meeting, or the men's room. But the PDA is always there and I can choose to check my calendar, take notes, or read Larry Niven's Crashlander at the push of a button.
Poormojo.org is a great source for free stuff in Palm doc format. There are enough tools out there to convert back to text/html, and then down to rb format, that one of these days I should really write a converter.Imagine it, they make every comment available, with sender's name. The next day, everybody that posted an anti-MS comment finds their copy of XP stops working. :)
How about ebook versions of dead tree releases? It would be great to have a 1000 page tome on the shelf, but a "quick reference" on your Palm. Many books have tri-fold perforated cards that you are expected to tear out of the cover and carry with you. Take that to the logical next step -- provide a small ebook version of that info. And since you're no longer limited to the trifold card, you can put as much or as little as you want in it.
And one of them raises his hand and says "But, I just don't like this. can I have something different?"
The answer would be no, wouldn't it? Wouldn't that suck as much as the current microsoftopoly?
I don't care if my officemates or my parents or my wife runs Linux. I want the choice to run Linux (and continue to interact with them). I want Linux to be allowed by Microsoft to generate a reasonable enough market share that software vendors work with us, produce drivers, etc.. That's it. I'm not interested in replacing one monopoly with another one.
b)You're not taking into account expotential increase in computer power. Read Kurzweil's books ("The Age of Spiritual Machines"). He shows the math for why Moore's Law is continuing to work, but over a shorter loop (i.e. 2 years, 18 months, 1 year...) He then extends that into the future and if I remember, within 100 years he's got nano technology, and other really far out ideas. Within 150 years you've just got good voice recognition.
I'd see if you can get yourself in the door by doing other work for them besides embedded work. Do they have some sort of GUI front end that goes with their device? Diagnostic tools? Or even in house development aids? If you can get any job working for a company you like, your odds are better that eventually you'll get a chance to work on some of the embedded stuff, especially once they know you've got some knowledge of the subject (assuming in that degree of yours you got some embedded experience :)).
The problem of course is that if you control both the producer and consumer you're greatly limiting the applicability of XML in the first place. Just yesterday I explained to my boss that one of the advantages to XML is for cases when you have 10 people who want your data, but you can't dictate was software they use...AND, 6 months from now, 10 other people who you haven't even met yet are going to want your data too. If you're in that boat, and you create any sort of compression scheme, then you're in trouble. If you're not, then you may not need XML at all (at least, not for moving your data around).
Perhaps you're hoping that there will be some compression module that becomes a standard part of XML, so that you can safely say "Anybody who is able to parse my XML message would also be able to decompress it"? Good luck. Even if that did happen, it would take ages for all of the parsers out there to get up to date.
What you'll probably find is that something like SOAP or WSDL will have a compression component. But in that case it's ok, because both the client and server sides of WSDL that do the marshalling/unmarshalling will be provided for you by your tools (such as BEA WebLogic). Think about what CORBA IDL was like -- you just write the interface, and then both client and server stubs are automatically generated for you. In that case, it's perfectly reasonable to expect that some compression/decompression code could be written in to the code automatically.
Since the whole architecture of the PC was open, there was no way that IBM would be a monopoly in that area. Therefore it's possible to assume that they could have chosen to set themselves up as a OS monopoly. But Microsoft did it instead.
It's already happening, and will continue. Have patience.
- maturity
- seniority, leadership
- variety of experience
- strong work ethic
This guy has his own business? Great, then he probably understands budgets, deadlines, resource management, and all kinds of other good stuff that any manager wishes his employees understood. He won't necessarily be *doing* those things when he wants an entry level spot, but he can appreciate what it means when his boss says "I understand that you want to do it this way, but you tell me that will take 8 weeks and I only have budget for 3 weeks, so do it the other way." Many of the hotshot young programmers who don't grok business will often shoot back "Then just change the budget" or something equally clueless. The experienced ones will say "You got it, boss" and make it happen in 3 weeks.Remember too, those young kids that will put in the long hours are also the ones that will leave your company in a heartbeat the day someone else comes along and promises to make them rich on stock options. The old timers are often the ones who remember what it's like to have loyalty to their career and the people around them, and not always the quick buck. Managers would kill for that.
In a car, these things don't always apply. Electricity is intermittent? Perhaps, during a particularly heavy rain, sometimes water gets onto a loose wire and creates a short. And on and on.
Reminds me of the time we were kids and drove to the store with a friend of ours and his little old Italian dad. The car wouldn't start when we came out of the store. So our friend hopped in the driver's seat, and the dad pulled out a hammer, opened the hood, and whacked something. 'Try it now, Freddy!" he yelled. Nothing. Whack, whack. "Again!" Nothing. Whack, whack. Whack! "One more time, I've hit every fucking thing in there." And it started.
I've written code using that approach. :)
I figure I'm getting one of these for Christmas, because I put it on the list and my parents said "What the hell is a BIO Bug and where would we get one?" I figure it will be a neat conversation piece at work (hey, I'm 32 :)). But I need more local geek friends to get these things so we can battle them. I hope I can get some fun out of it by itself, butI'm not sure. The article gives me hope, though.