Related: Richard Preston also wrote the non-fiction book The Hot Zone, where he discusses Ebola, Marburg, and other hot viruses in detail (and it's perhaps the first mass media coverage they received), as well as how the CDC operates to identify, contain, and otherwise deal with hot viruses.
The Cobra Event was OKi for fiction, but rather meh compared to works by Follett or Crichton (RIP), that may be shakier on the science but way more entertaining. However, in my opinion, Preston's non-fiction, documentary accounts in The Hot Zone and in The Demon in the Freezer are way, way, way scarier. Highly recommended.
Trivia: Richard Preston is the only civilian, non-physician/doctor of any kind, who's been recognized for his work by the Centers of Disease Control.
Unrelated to the person who posted that he left Gmail -- just FYI.
I've been running my own email servers since 1998. Between friends, family, a couple of small businesses, etc. my servers handle about 100 different email accounts (many friends from the Freenode IRC network). Here is my personal server evolution:
* I went through sendmail, qmail, and Procmail (where I found joy since 2006 or ) * POP3, then Courier IMAP -- stayed with Courier IMAP (2006) * Myriad of email clients, relied on Mail.app for about 18 months, then settled on Thunderbird around 2007 because it does what I expect it to do, and its bugs and quirks are predictable * Spam? I had some Internet service for a while that eventually got too expensive; SpamAssassin since 2007 -- I seldom see an ad * Content disposition? procmail back in the day, moved to maildrop in 2007 or 2008 -- I like recipes that are human-readable * ClamAV * Too many dumb attachments and a few non-tech users on the network? Anomy Sanitizer for attachments * Mail everywhere? My MacBook, iPhone, and Linux machines all do IMAP just fine (it broke on Windows 8 - they suck - I might dig the tweet later...) * Mail EVERYWHERE? SquirrelMail for a few years, then Round Cube which offers a similar UI and expected behavior to Thunderbird, no grief, Just Works
Why not Gmail and Google Apps for Business?
* Because other than patches (which my Linux servers handle almost automatically) I don't have to screw with email more than a couple of hours every 18 months or so, and I find it useful to once in a while look at the setup (usually when I deploy a new server) * Because I don't like Google snooping over every communication I have * I hate threading -- chronological message ordering, please * Folders are easier to grasp than labels * I suspect that "Trash" in Google just means it's moved elsewhere; I had some litigation (which I won fair and square) where the asshat lawyer for the other site wanted to go on a fishing expedition on my servers -- will Google cave and turn stuff over that was supposed to be "deleted"? * My servers has a retention policy articulated for all users, and it destroys logs and Trash messages periodically, without recourse * If you tell me you need it, you can have an encrypted Maildir setup too
Given that RoundCube has excellent webmail features, for that reason alone I see no point in going to Gmail. The other reasons... to each their own.
Speaking from experience here -- I have the US equivalent to a masters degree in computer engineering. Other than my permanent residency paperwork for my US green card and my Russian permanent worker permit, nobody has ever bothered to really go into what school or what degrees I hold. I started programming/building systems in 1984 (I was 17), and was working hands on with cool things by 1988 (real-time controllers, a windowing system for character based terminals and RM-COBOL, etc.). Since then I have seldom worked with run-o-the-mill business applications development. I spent my whole career building/designing infrastructure-type software (compilers, network/system management tools, industrial robots, big data analysis and knowledge discovery) and the common theme has always been that it's been up to me to both stay current and to figure out the areas that I will find interesting. I've been chief architect at a Fortune-5 company, and have been involved in all kinds of cool development projects/startups/companies because I keep sharpening the knives (my skills). I managed to do this by investing time in these basic two items:
1. Always learn something new. I spend at least 8 hours/week researching new things to apply at work -- if I know it, I'll find a place to implement it 2. Don't underestimate relationships! Go out and meet new people. IRC (irc://irc.freenode.net in particular) has been huge for business and professional development for me
In development relationships -- get involved in 2 or more open source projects that you find interesting. Contribute. Challenge. Use them. Contribute some more. Become a trusted voice. Be generous with advice, and learn as much as you can from others. Go to your local users groups. If you're near Silicon Valley or some other tech hub, join a business association or two, and go schmooze. Get yourself invited to speak at a conference or two. Become a domain expert. Start a newsletter or blog. Develop a network.
Luck is what you find at the intersection of readiness and opportunity. Go to school (yey! I wish I could do that again!) but, most important, remember that your career is your responsibility and that you must invest time in developing it so that interesting and lucrative things come your way. The most important thing, regardless of how you decide to gain new knowledge, is that you find your problem domains interesting and fun. Otherwise your career will stagnate regardless of your educational level because you won't be engaged. Every time I did something just for the paycheque, the return on my time/energy investment was low and those projects didn't last long. Every time I've done something that sounds fun and challenging I end up getting a bigger payout (economic, professional, etc.) than I expected. In my latest venture, for example, I get to work shoulder-to-shoulder with PhD super boffins from SRI International and other places. On paper I'm the intellectual pigmy -- but in practice we just work together, get things done, and I just found out that the work I did made them decide to include me in two patent filings. Works for me -- and my career.
So -- PhD, MsC, BBQ - whatever you do -- make sure you're passionate about it, that you have fun, and that you invest the time and energy necessary to make you proficient at it. The rewards will follow.
In my case, I continued to use lots of fun math every 12-18 months or so throughout my career. I started doing embedded systems, then moved over to compilers for a couple of years, then back to embedded, system management, scalable systems/networks, and such. Lots of great opportunities for fun math beyond simple arithmetic. In my current project we're working with the scientists at SRI on some cool predictive model stuff that requires understanding math for sample analysis and prediction. Them guys are better at science and math than me and my team, we're better at programming (Java, Scala, Python)... we both grow intellectually and professionally. Last year around this time I was working on neural networks and epidemiology models for analyzing social patterns data. Fun times.
If you go into areas like Big Data analysis, especially if you go toward large social network/epidemic spread analysis, or high frequency trading, or other forms of trend analysis, you'll get plenty of chances to exercise your math muscles with things that you'll learn in calculus, analytic geometry, statistics and probability, and/or differential equations. These gigs (whether as an employee or as a consultant) are also very well paid because you won't be just "coding" and calling APIs blindly. For example, fraud detection is a huge area for people processing lots of credit card transactions -- whether they are the creditor bank or the bank's client. Lots of fun theorems apply (e.g. for something simple to grasp but with profound implications take a look at Benford's Law).
Games... from what I know about the industry, lots of vector calculus, fractals... fun times.
Spend some time learning R programming (it's fun, frustrating, and very, very useful). R gives you a rich tool set for math and graphics that will blow your colleagues or client's mind away if you know how to apply it combined with good, solid math knowledge. Think of it as awk for math instead of text. With a couple of lines of code typed in 30-60 seconds you can analyze a table with tens of columns and thousands of rows, and generate fantastic plots/charts; such thing would blow an Excel expert's mind because the same work would take at least 30 minutes and it'll look like pure magic to him.
Think about it like this: the more you know, the more areas where you'll be able to apply your knowledge. All the guys I know who learned the math and who can apply it are always in demand (recession proof!).
Disclaimer: computer engineer here, not a math major or actuary (nor was I interested ever in being one). As an engineer, I know how to *apply* the math, don't care much about theorems and proofs. When I'm not architecting systems/working on interesting aspects of some project, I'm doing boring stuff like business development and managing development teams. That's pretty boring, though -- having tech + math knowledge helps me move on to interesting stuff quickly when needed.
Good luck in your quest, and I hope that you get a chance to learn and apply math that you find interesting and fun!
4-language fluency here (Spanish, English, Russian, French) and working my way up in Japanese.
The difference between doing business in English in a land where it's not the native language vs. the local/national language is huge. By not speaking the local language you limit your understanding ranging feim mere subtlety to complete conversations that may (and will) happen in front of you.
Maybe it's because for a large chunk of the last 15 years I've arranged my business around international locales (e.g. I was doing business in 5 countries in July) -- I find knowing multiple languages to be a huge asset. It fine tuned my cultural sensibility and my ear (e.g. I can grasp significant snippets in Polish, German, Italian during a biz conversation). And it helps to lubricate all social situations.
The ages at which I learned them were English: 16; French: 18; Russian: 24; Japanese (which I use the least and I'm far from fluent): 38. If I went to Japan on business more than 5 weeks/year I'd probably be more fluent.
In the US or abroad I deal daily with people who speak these languages. Communicating with them in their native language can often create rapport and a better experience much faster. Great for business and interpersonal relationships.
Frequent flyer here. Moscow and San Francisco are my homes, and I travel for business around 3 out of every 4 weeks (I've been to Novosibirsk, New York City, Kiev, and Paris for at least 3 days each in the last 3 weeks). I deal with airport security screenings several times a week. The only difference I see in the security screenings from the US is that removing your shoes isn't a requirement in most of the rest of the world. I've even ran into the body scanners a few times outside the US. I dislike the current TSA at the same level as I dislike every other screening group because they all offer almost the same experience.
International airports and airlines with connections to the US must enact similar policies and procedures to allow flights into American territory. I've been traveling like this since 1993, and I always noticed that any policy or procedure implemented in the US is soon followed by similar one (or even more draconian, like in Poland) by the rest of the world.
Mr. Hawley's Top 5 Things to Improve would be a welcome boon to us travelers. I overall enjoyed the article and agree with the information it provides, and look forward to the improvements, if our hated asshat politicians manage to heed his advise and enact most (or all!) of his recommendations. Security theater isn't a US-only travel issue; doing away with it at the TSA will soon result in better travel conditions everywhere else.
You undergo about 2 years of training, and then you may become eligible to participate in a space mission.
As soon as you fly in a mission you earn the title of "astronaut" followed by "pilot", "EVA specialist", "payload specialist", or "mission specialist", depending on what you were doing.
Contacts or glasses. Laser surgery is only admissible if it was done over a year before the final job interviews take place *and* you had no side-effects from it.
FYI - unless your vision isn't correctable to 20/20 via glasses or contacts, eyesight isn't an impediment for becoming a non-piloting astronaut (you can become a mission or payload specialist, EVA specialist, and so on). If you really want to become an astronaut, keep your eyes open on the http://www.usajobs.gov/ site. They open astronaut candidate vacancies every 3 - 5 years.
I know about the glasses because my application is under consideration. Here's what NASA replied:
Eyeglasses and contacts are permitted. I would not recommend having any type of surgery solely for the purpose of being eligible for the Astronaut Candidate Program.
The refractive surgical procedures of the eye, PRK and LASIK, is allowed, providing at least 1 year has passed since the date of the procedure with no permanent adverse after effects. For those applicants under final consideration, an operative report on the surgical procedure will be requested. We anticipate completing review of the applications to determine the highly qualified applicants in July 2012 so the surgery must have been performed no later than July 31, 2011.
For additional information regarding the medical standards, please contact our Flight Medicine Office.
I split my time between my homes in San Francisco and Moscow, and more than 50% of my time I'm traveling around major cities in Europe and Asia. I seldom use cars in Moscow, London, Paris, Tokyo, or pretty much anywhere else where trains, metro, buses, trolley cars, etc. are available. I never owned a car or motorcycle anywhere in Europe or in Tokyo because I just don't need to. If necessary, I rent a car for a day or two, then it's back to the metro.
Public transportation in San Francisco just *sucks* in comparison to other cities, both in the US and worldwide. My beloved city (SF!) doesn't have the flexibility of underground trains like NYC or DC do. MUNI is a joke -- they have lots of buses that have the most inefficient passenger pickup areas in the world -- never have I seen a bus line with bus stops at almost every flipping corner along the route, like in San Francisco. Taxis? More suckiness. Trains? Forget it. San Francisco without your own wheels becomes a pain in the ass very fast.
"The bus system was great!" - try planning your trip by bus, and being on time without having to leave too early, from any point in San Francisco to your destination within the city. You often have to wait for 20-30 minutes without a bus in sight, then four or five come together, in a bunch, because the MUNI drivers decided to take a smoke or lunch break and end it at the same time. This is a far cry from a place like say, Zurich or Oslo, cities of the same approximate area and with a high automobile density, where the bus schedule is met at exact times (e.g."next bus will be a 10:43" and it shows up at exactly that time).
I love San Francisco more than any place in the world. Hearing someone praise its public transportation, though, is like hearing someone praise my mentally handicapped kid brother's arithmetic ability as if he were solving differential equations.
I agree with the spirit of what you say, perhaps disagree a bit on the details.
When hiring a civil or mechanical engineer I'd certainly put the guy through the paces (I did that when I was in charge of building industrial robots, early 2000s) to ensure that he or she doesn't kill someone by swinging a fingerboard to far, too fast, or too close to where people might be, and so on. Or cause an explosion. Or... you get the idea.
You wouldn't let a civil or mechanical junior engineer design a bridge or industrial tool either. You'd invite her as part of a team, watch them contribute, and build accountability over time in response to their ability to deliver, to learn the details of the job, and to deal with human factors ranging from management to on-site security.
I do find a more cavalier attitude in software development, where computer "science" graduates are thrown to develop mission-critical or business-critical system without much thought IN SOME SHOPS. Throughout my career my teams tried to be responsible about who's building what, to prevent hurting our users, clients, or employers. But then I'm a computer *engineer*, not a computer *scientist* -- different animals. We had a joke back at the university: "Please don't call me 'computer scientist' -- I do know math, physics, and statistics, and didn't go to college just to get credits."
I'm a VP of technology for several companies, and have been in a position to hire software, network, and system engineers since at least 1997. In all honesty, neither I, nor any of the people who've reported to me, ever paid much attention about where someone went to school, what their actual degree was, or whether they had earned some honor -- as long as the guy could deliver. From certs to prestigious schools, we never really bothered. Eventually I found out that I had a couple of MIT grads and at least one Stanford kid. I also had a pile of people whose degrees were awarded by foreign universities (including my own) and really... nobody really cares.
If you have the skills and you have the work experience, then you should be fine.
Right now I sit on the tech board for a couple of companies in Europe and the US, and I'm driving the technology at a very large social network with dev operations in the UK and Russia. I do notice that Europeans pay more attention to "schooling" and "degrees" and "titles" than US companies do, but not by much. My former employers and clients include some of the largest companies in Silicon Valley, rest of the US, Europe, Japan, and Mexico. The only occasions when I had to produce some kind of official proof of education were:
* When getting my US labor certification (1991... long time ago...), and when getting my Russian labor certification (last year) -- bureaucrats just love the fsck-ng paperwork * When applying for a US federal job -- even then, they clarified that all they care about is whether I completed the degree or whether it was accredited, the date, and some accreditation equivalence since my degrees are from foreign institutions
Pro Tip: see if your employer will pitch in for part or whole course. Tech departments have educational budgets ranging from a couple of hundred dollars/year for books per employee, to full scholarships. I've auth'd books, on-line courses, conferences, PIM, and university courses for my peeps many times in the past. Check that out with your supervisor or with HR. A lot of people don't realize the option might be there -- and, if others in your group aren't taking advantage of it, your manager may be amiable to extend your budget a bit more (since money she doesn't spend is money she may have to cut next year).
So -- get your education wherever you can as long as they are legit, kick some butt, take names, and good luck in your career advancement!
Let's say, for sake of argument, that for some reason you want to shield your phone for a period of time. Make it completely opaque. Just put it inside a mid-range to good quality microwave oven. Good shielding prevents the signals from going in or out. This way the phone disappears in a certain location. It reappears at the same location some time later; while it was in the microwave oven, if the shielding is good enough, nothing will come in or out.
Other fun tricks: are you on GSM? Remove the SIM card, and pop a different one from a different provider. Preferably one from out of the country. Don't do it at the same location, though. Remove and leave at home, go a few km away, pop the other SIM card in. Don't pay for the second one with the same credit card as the first one. And so on.
The interview was entertaining and somewhat insightful. I wish the interviewers would've asked more details about Gosling's current doings, what aspects of NoSQL he's working on, details about the languages, etc. Too much space was allocated to Oracle Venting. I wish the interviewers or Gosling would've devoted more time to more technical stuff and future directions.
While taste in mice and features vary, one thing I would vouch for, if you're right handed and have a full keyboard, is to learn to use your mouse with your left hand. I worked with Gene Korienek in the early 1990s and we discussed how to optimize mouse motion. Since the page navigation, Return key, and numeric pad are all on your right side, using your mouse with your left hand will make you more effective for some activities such as using spreadsheets, Photoshop, web surfing, etc. I went "mouse southpaw" since then -- super-comfortable.
Now... for programming I use MacVim and a number of plug-ins and extensions. When I'm programming, unless it's something that's got a GUI or it's iPhone/Mac specific, I seldom use the mouse. One of the biggest advantages of using a keyboard instead of a mouse is sensory memory. There are actions in Vim (and possibly TextMate, emacs, etc.) that you can execute automatically, without thinking about the exact key press sequence, and without having to lift your hands off the keyboard. Check into any of these editors, add the appropriate plug-ins (e.g. "UNIX is my IDE") and see what works best for you. I went from keyboard-only (TurboPascal, Turbo C, vi/UNIX) to GUI IDE (Smalltalk/V, Symantec Cafe, Visual Studio, IDEA) back to keyboard-only for most programming tasks. Now my coding is split between keyboard-only (scripting, Java, C, assembler) and GUI/mouse for only a few environments that leave you no other option (Xcode/Interface Builder).
I have been an OpenOffice.org supporter and evangelist for many years. It saddens me to see Novell do these things because they at once seem good for their business but place people on the road to vendor lock-in once more. The Microsoft formats are closed and incompatible. The sane approach would be to standardize ODF across the board.
Novell must protect its business as an obligation to its shareholders. In the process, though, they may alienate some of the open-source community supporters to the point where countermeasures may be executed. Forks like this mean that some open-source developers and organizations may ban or license their software in such a way that prevents Novell from sharing the goodies. This in turn results in fragmentation that benefits nobody but Microsoft and its offerings.
This is a master stroke from Microsoft's point of view because this way they may sneak OpenXML into organizations that had otherwise had the sanity to abandon MS-Office and forces them to move in that direction again. Novell gets stuck in the middle, with their leadership getting screwed from both ends (open-source developers and advocates in one corner, and Microsoft in the other) while thinking that they are doing something good. In the end nobody but Microsoft wins this one.
Just say "NO" to OpenXML in an OpenOffice.org fork. Make it an optional package download, and make it a non-default setting, but don't fork the code. In fact, I'd go one step further and make it a requirement for Microsoft Office (and Office Mac) to support ODF if they want OpenXML included in any open-source product. That would make this a two-way street. Are you listening, Novell?
Cheers,
E
This will help others adopt Linux
on
Oracle Linux Explored
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Greetings.
There is a wrong perception that large companies don't adopt Linux because they prefer commercial offerings. This is only half right. It's not that they like commercial software per se, or that they don't know or understand the benefits of open-source software. The real issue for the lack of adoption is the perceived legal exposures of running software and becoming liable for it (SCO, anyone?). These large companies would be happy to bring Linux in-house as long as a larger company offers some kind of indemnification clause in their contracts.
Many large companies offer Linux distributions and absorb the indemnification. It's no wonder then that superior distributions like Ubuntu aren't on the enterprise shopping list: there is little or no viable indemnification offered. Red Hat is a big fish among open-source vendors but not large enough to convince many large enterprises to take the plunge. That's why IBM has made a good play in this arena: their Linux offerings are rather crappy, but they offer the magic word: INDEMNIFICATION. This has opened many doors for them that remained shut to other vendors.
An Oracle offering brings the same "large company support" that will let the pussies in legal departments and the dumbass middle managers sleep well at night. Oracle is already known to work well with Linux; couple that that with Red Hat functionality and Oracle support (especially if other Oracle products are involved) and that makes a very attractive proposition for all the parties involved. If Oracle plays this right they can start by offering Red Hat dressed in Oracle garb as they came out of the gate, and then provide a migration path toward Ubuntu or another Linux distribution with better tools.
Oracle didn't get that big by being idiots. They are smart and they are aggressive. I think that this is overall a good thing. It creates more competition for IBM, who perhaps now will actually push for real Linux offerings that work, for Novell with SuSe, for Sun and Solaris, and it opens the door for upstarts like Canonical who are well-positioned to make Ubuntu a household name. Last, it will open doors to Linux that would otherwise remain shut. Oracle Linux marks the maturity phase of the first round of consolidation and is the harbinger of the next distribution wars. The next five years will be very interesting.
I believe that Ubuntu is on the right track because of the rules they have in place. Some open-source advocates confuse structure with lack of innovation, or with coerciveness, and thus eschew these rules which, in the long run, will hurt their cause. Anarchist behavior appears to be a good thing only in fiction. In real life it leads to erosion of the institutions that harbor it.
The open-source community wields great power now that our software is being adopted for solving a wider range of problems. Our responsibility is to create an environment that will promote cooperation and the continuous evolution of our products and services. An environment where flamewars and egos are flaring all the time will always end up hurting the projects until they wilt and die. This hurts our collective credibility and hinders our ability to bring more open-source projects in-house.
My first reaction was the same as many here when I read the article: why bother, if you have broadband?
Cringely gives a good answer toward the end: because not everyone we know is using computers or cares about broadband. Outside our techie world, some people find the computer either intimidating or perfectly acceptable running on a 56 kbps modem. Thus, the ability to dock and iPod and refresh its contents at a local store isn't that far-fetched.
If you look at some of the big box retailers' strategies, they're all leveraging their on-line stores against their bricks-n-mortar stores, creating a continuum rather than a separate experience. They are integrating their.com stores with their real stores. Apple probably wouldn't make the movies available through Blockbuster/Hollywood Video/etc. that would be just the channel to make them available for the computer-phobes or non-broadband customers.
Now... coming back to reality... where on earth does Cringely get this stuff? Very entertaining, good speculation... but just that, in the end. Is anyone keeping track of which of his write ups wind up being accurate?
Slashdot Mirror
Awesome -- I'll add it to my reading list. Thanks for the recommendation!
Cheers,
E
Related: Richard Preston also wrote the non-fiction book The Hot Zone, where he discusses Ebola, Marburg, and other hot viruses in detail (and it's perhaps the first mass media coverage they received), as well as how the CDC operates to identify, contain, and otherwise deal with hot viruses.
The Cobra Event was OKi for fiction, but rather meh compared to works by Follett or Crichton (RIP), that may be shakier on the science but way more entertaining. However, in my opinion, Preston's non-fiction, documentary accounts in The Hot Zone and in The Demon in the Freezer are way, way, way scarier. Highly recommended.
Trivia: Richard Preston is the only civilian, non-physician/doctor of any kind, who's been recognized for his work by the Centers of Disease Control.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Hot-Zone-Terrifying-Story/dp/0385495226/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_z/177-7970503-1396814
http://www.amazon.com/The-Demon-Freezer-True-Story/dp/0345466632/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y/177-7970503-1396814
Cheers!
Are you thinking Ryan Air, perhaps?
Unrelated to the person who posted that he left Gmail -- just FYI.
I've been running my own email servers since 1998. Between friends, family, a couple of small businesses, etc. my servers handle about 100 different email accounts (many friends from the Freenode IRC network). Here is my personal server evolution:
* I went through sendmail, qmail, and Procmail (where I found joy since 2006 or )
* POP3, then Courier IMAP -- stayed with Courier IMAP (2006)
* Myriad of email clients, relied on Mail.app for about 18 months, then settled on Thunderbird around 2007 because it does what I expect it to do, and its bugs and quirks are predictable
* Spam? I had some Internet service for a while that eventually got too expensive; SpamAssassin since 2007 -- I seldom see an ad
* Content disposition? procmail back in the day, moved to maildrop in 2007 or 2008 -- I like recipes that are human-readable
* ClamAV
* Too many dumb attachments and a few non-tech users on the network? Anomy Sanitizer for attachments
* Mail everywhere? My MacBook, iPhone, and Linux machines all do IMAP just fine (it broke on Windows 8 - they suck - I might dig the tweet later...)
* Mail EVERYWHERE? SquirrelMail for a few years, then Round Cube which offers a similar UI and expected behavior to Thunderbird, no grief, Just Works
Why not Gmail and Google Apps for Business?
* Because other than patches (which my Linux servers handle almost automatically) I don't have to screw with email more than a couple of hours every 18 months or so, and I find it useful to once in a while look at the setup (usually when I deploy a new server)
* Because I don't like Google snooping over every communication I have
* I hate threading -- chronological message ordering, please
* Folders are easier to grasp than labels
* I suspect that "Trash" in Google just means it's moved elsewhere; I had some litigation (which I won fair and square) where the asshat lawyer for the other site wanted to go on a fishing expedition on my servers -- will Google cave and turn stuff over that was supposed to be "deleted"?
* My servers has a retention policy articulated for all users, and it destroys logs and Trash messages periodically, without recourse
* If you tell me you need it, you can have an encrypted Maildir setup too
Given that RoundCube has excellent webmail features, for that reason alone I see no point in going to Gmail. The other reasons... to each their own.
Cheers!
Privoxy (http://privoxy.org) follows me wherever I go with ad blocking.
* Set it on my gateway.
* Require my own authenticated proxy for computer + mobile device, that in turn connects through Privoxy.
I haven't seen an ad in like, forever. Not on iOS, not on any of my systems.
Cheers!
Let Texas blabber for a while. I heard we're giving them back to Mexico soon anyway.
WTF...? Who told you we wanted them back...? You can keep 'em!
Hi there!
Speaking from experience here -- I have the US equivalent to a masters degree in computer engineering. Other than my permanent residency paperwork for my US green card and my Russian permanent worker permit, nobody has ever bothered to really go into what school or what degrees I hold. I started programming/building systems in 1984 (I was 17), and was working hands on with cool things by 1988 (real-time controllers, a windowing system for character based terminals and RM-COBOL, etc.). Since then I have seldom worked with run-o-the-mill business applications development. I spent my whole career building/designing infrastructure-type software (compilers, network/system management tools, industrial robots, big data analysis and knowledge discovery) and the common theme has always been that it's been up to me to both stay current and to figure out the areas that I will find interesting. I've been chief architect at a Fortune-5 company, and have been involved in all kinds of cool development projects/startups/companies because I keep sharpening the knives (my skills). I managed to do this by investing time in these basic two items:
1. Always learn something new. I spend at least 8 hours/week researching new things to apply at work -- if I know it, I'll find a place to implement it
2. Don't underestimate relationships! Go out and meet new people. IRC (irc://irc.freenode.net in particular) has been huge for business and professional development for me
In development relationships -- get involved in 2 or more open source projects that you find interesting. Contribute. Challenge. Use them. Contribute some more. Become a trusted voice. Be generous with advice, and learn as much as you can from others. Go to your local users groups. If you're near Silicon Valley or some other tech hub, join a business association or two, and go schmooze. Get yourself invited to speak at a conference or two. Become a domain expert. Start a newsletter or blog. Develop a network.
Luck is what you find at the intersection of readiness and opportunity. Go to school (yey! I wish I could do that again!) but, most important, remember that your career is your responsibility and that you must invest time in developing it so that interesting and lucrative things come your way. The most important thing, regardless of how you decide to gain new knowledge, is that you find your problem domains interesting and fun. Otherwise your career will stagnate regardless of your educational level because you won't be engaged. Every time I did something just for the paycheque, the return on my time/energy investment was low and those projects didn't last long. Every time I've done something that sounds fun and challenging I end up getting a bigger payout (economic, professional, etc.) than I expected. In my latest venture, for example, I get to work shoulder-to-shoulder with PhD super boffins from SRI International and other places. On paper I'm the intellectual pigmy -- but in practice we just work together, get things done, and I just found out that the work I did made them decide to include me in two patent filings. Works for me -- and my career.
So -- PhD, MsC, BBQ - whatever you do -- make sure you're passionate about it, that you have fun, and that you invest the time and energy necessary to make you proficient at it. The rewards will follow.
Cheers!
Most of my life centers around multiply nested loops peppered with if-then statements plus regular expressions.
Makes me wonder if exactly some of that stuff could be replaced with some clever math.
Yup, it could. Geometry FTW!
Hi there!
In my case, I continued to use lots of fun math every 12-18 months or so throughout my career. I started doing embedded systems, then moved over to compilers for a couple of years, then back to embedded, system management, scalable systems/networks, and such. Lots of great opportunities for fun math beyond simple arithmetic. In my current project we're working with the scientists at SRI on some cool predictive model stuff that requires understanding math for sample analysis and prediction. Them guys are better at science and math than me and my team, we're better at programming (Java, Scala, Python)... we both grow intellectually and professionally. Last year around this time I was working on neural networks and epidemiology models for analyzing social patterns data. Fun times.
If you go into areas like Big Data analysis, especially if you go toward large social network/epidemic spread analysis, or high frequency trading, or other forms of trend analysis, you'll get plenty of chances to exercise your math muscles with things that you'll learn in calculus, analytic geometry, statistics and probability, and/or differential equations. These gigs (whether as an employee or as a consultant) are also very well paid because you won't be just "coding" and calling APIs blindly. For example, fraud detection is a huge area for people processing lots of credit card transactions -- whether they are the creditor bank or the bank's client. Lots of fun theorems apply (e.g. for something simple to grasp but with profound implications take a look at Benford's Law).
Games... from what I know about the industry, lots of vector calculus, fractals... fun times.
Spend some time learning R programming (it's fun, frustrating, and very, very useful). R gives you a rich tool set for math and graphics that will blow your colleagues or client's mind away if you know how to apply it combined with good, solid math knowledge. Think of it as awk for math instead of text. With a couple of lines of code typed in 30-60 seconds you can analyze a table with tens of columns and thousands of rows, and generate fantastic plots/charts; such thing would blow an Excel expert's mind because the same work would take at least 30 minutes and it'll look like pure magic to him.
Think about it like this: the more you know, the more areas where you'll be able to apply your knowledge. All the guys I know who learned the math and who can apply it are always in demand (recession proof!).
Disclaimer: computer engineer here, not a math major or actuary (nor was I interested ever in being one). As an engineer, I know how to *apply* the math, don't care much about theorems and proofs. When I'm not architecting systems/working on interesting aspects of some project, I'm doing boring stuff like business development and managing development teams. That's pretty boring, though -- having tech + math knowledge helps me move on to interesting stuff quickly when needed.
Good luck in your quest, and I hope that you get a chance to learn and apply math that you find interesting and fun!
E
4-language fluency here (Spanish, English, Russian, French) and working my way up in Japanese.
The difference between doing business in English in a land where it's not the native language vs. the local/national language is huge. By not speaking the local language you limit your understanding ranging feim mere subtlety to complete conversations that may (and will) happen in front of you.
Maybe it's because for a large chunk of the last 15 years I've arranged my business around international locales (e.g. I was doing business in 5 countries in July) -- I find knowing multiple languages to be a huge asset. It fine tuned my cultural sensibility and my ear (e.g. I can grasp significant snippets in Polish, German, Italian during a biz conversation). And it helps to lubricate all social situations.
The ages at which I learned them were English: 16; French: 18; Russian: 24; Japanese (which I use the least and I'm far from fluent): 38. If I went to Japan on business more than 5 weeks/year I'd probably be more fluent.
In the US or abroad I deal daily with people who speak these languages. Communicating with them in their native language can often create rapport and a better experience much faster. Great for business and interpersonal relationships.
Just my $0.02 back. Cheers!
Greetings.
Frequent flyer here. Moscow and San Francisco are my homes, and I travel for business around 3 out of every 4 weeks (I've been to Novosibirsk, New York City, Kiev, and Paris for at least 3 days each in the last 3 weeks). I deal with airport security screenings several times a week. The only difference I see in the security screenings from the US is that removing your shoes isn't a requirement in most of the rest of the world. I've even ran into the body scanners a few times outside the US. I dislike the current TSA at the same level as I dislike every other screening group because they all offer almost the same experience.
International airports and airlines with connections to the US must enact similar policies and procedures to allow flights into American territory. I've been traveling like this since 1993, and I always noticed that any policy or procedure implemented in the US is soon followed by similar one (or even more draconian, like in Poland) by the rest of the world.
Mr. Hawley's Top 5 Things to Improve would be a welcome boon to us travelers. I overall enjoyed the article and agree with the information it provides, and look forward to the improvements, if our hated asshat politicians manage to heed his advise and enact most (or all!) of his recommendations. Security theater isn't a US-only travel issue; doing away with it at the TSA will soon result in better travel conditions everywhere else.
Cheers!
Dammit - I meant "astronaut candidate applicant" - my bad. Cheers!
The title is "astronaut candidate".
You undergo about 2 years of training, and then you may become eligible to participate in a space mission.
As soon as you fly in a mission you earn the title of "astronaut" followed by "pilot", "EVA specialist", "payload specialist", or "mission specialist", depending on what you were doing.
Cheers!
Howdy - astronaut candidate here.
Contacts or glasses. Laser surgery is only admissible if it was done over a year before the final job interviews take place *and* you had no side-effects from it.
I mentioned that here, earlier in this thread: http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2768227&cid=39600169
Cheers!
Hi Surt!
FYI - unless your vision isn't correctable to 20/20 via glasses or contacts, eyesight isn't an impediment for becoming a non-piloting astronaut (you can become a mission or payload specialist, EVA specialist, and so on). If you really want to become an astronaut, keep your eyes open on the http://www.usajobs.gov/ site. They open astronaut candidate vacancies every 3 - 5 years.
I know about the glasses because my application is under consideration. Here's what NASA replied:
Eyeglasses and contacts are permitted. I would not recommend having any type of surgery solely for the purpose of being eligible for the Astronaut Candidate Program.
The refractive surgical procedures of the eye, PRK and LASIK, is allowed, providing at least 1 year has passed since the date of the procedure with no permanent adverse after effects. For those applicants under final consideration, an operative report on the surgical procedure will be requested. We anticipate completing review of the applications to determine the highly qualified applicants in July 2012 so the surgery must have been performed no later than July 31, 2011.
For additional information regarding the medical standards, please contact our Flight Medicine Office.
So... good luck with your application!
Howdy!
I split my time between my homes in San Francisco and Moscow, and more than 50% of my time I'm traveling around major cities in Europe and Asia. I seldom use cars in Moscow, London, Paris, Tokyo, or pretty much anywhere else where trains, metro, buses, trolley cars, etc. are available. I never owned a car or motorcycle anywhere in Europe or in Tokyo because I just don't need to. If necessary, I rent a car for a day or two, then it's back to the metro.
Public transportation in San Francisco just *sucks* in comparison to other cities, both in the US and worldwide. My beloved city (SF!) doesn't have the flexibility of underground trains like NYC or DC do. MUNI is a joke -- they have lots of buses that have the most inefficient passenger pickup areas in the world -- never have I seen a bus line with bus stops at almost every flipping corner along the route, like in San Francisco. Taxis? More suckiness. Trains? Forget it. San Francisco without your own wheels becomes a pain in the ass very fast.
"The bus system was great!" - try planning your trip by bus, and being on time without having to leave too early, from any point in San Francisco to your destination within the city. You often have to wait for 20-30 minutes without a bus in sight, then four or five come together, in a bunch, because the MUNI drivers decided to take a smoke or lunch break and end it at the same time. This is a far cry from a place like say, Zurich or Oslo, cities of the same approximate area and with a high automobile density, where the bus schedule is met at exact times (e.g."next bus will be a 10:43" and it shows up at exactly that time).
I love San Francisco more than any place in the world. Hearing someone praise its public transportation, though, is like hearing someone praise my mentally handicapped kid brother's arithmetic ability as if he were solving differential equations.
Cheers!
I agree with the spirit of what you say, perhaps disagree a bit on the details.
When hiring a civil or mechanical engineer I'd certainly put the guy through the paces (I did that when I was in charge of building industrial robots, early 2000s) to ensure that he or she doesn't kill someone by swinging a fingerboard to far, too fast, or too close to where people might be, and so on. Or cause an explosion. Or... you get the idea.
You wouldn't let a civil or mechanical junior engineer design a bridge or industrial tool either. You'd invite her as part of a team, watch them contribute, and build accountability over time in response to their ability to deliver, to learn the details of the job, and to deal with human factors ranging from management to on-site security.
I do find a more cavalier attitude in software development, where computer "science" graduates are thrown to develop mission-critical or business-critical system without much thought IN SOME SHOPS. Throughout my career my teams tried to be responsible about who's building what, to prevent hurting our users, clients, or employers. But then I'm a computer *engineer*, not a computer *scientist* -- different animals. We had a joke back at the university: "Please don't call me 'computer scientist' -- I do know math, physics, and statistics, and didn't go to college just to get credits."
Cheers!
E
Howdy.
I'm a VP of technology for several companies, and have been in a position to hire software, network, and system engineers since at least 1997. In all honesty, neither I, nor any of the people who've reported to me, ever paid much attention about where someone went to school, what their actual degree was, or whether they had earned some honor -- as long as the guy could deliver. From certs to prestigious schools, we never really bothered. Eventually I found out that I had a couple of MIT grads and at least one Stanford kid. I also had a pile of people whose degrees were awarded by foreign universities (including my own) and really... nobody really cares.
If you have the skills and you have the work experience, then you should be fine.
Right now I sit on the tech board for a couple of companies in Europe and the US, and I'm driving the technology at a very large social network with dev operations in the UK and Russia. I do notice that Europeans pay more attention to "schooling" and "degrees" and "titles" than US companies do, but not by much. My former employers and clients include some of the largest companies in Silicon Valley, rest of the US, Europe, Japan, and Mexico. The only occasions when I had to produce some kind of official proof of education were:
* When getting my US labor certification (1991... long time ago...), and when getting my Russian labor certification (last year) -- bureaucrats just love the fsck-ng paperwork
* When applying for a US federal job -- even then, they clarified that all they care about is whether I completed the degree or whether it was accredited, the date, and some accreditation equivalence since my degrees are from foreign institutions
Pro Tip: see if your employer will pitch in for part or whole course. Tech departments have educational budgets ranging from a couple of hundred dollars/year for books per employee, to full scholarships. I've auth'd books, on-line courses, conferences, PIM, and university courses for my peeps many times in the past. Check that out with your supervisor or with HR. A lot of people don't realize the option might be there -- and, if others in your group aren't taking advantage of it, your manager may be amiable to extend your budget a bit more (since money she doesn't spend is money she may have to cut next year).
So -- get your education wherever you can as long as they are legit, kick some butt, take names, and good luck in your career advancement!
Cheers!
Let's say, for sake of argument, that for some reason you want to shield your phone for a period of time. Make it completely opaque. Just put it inside a mid-range to good quality microwave oven. Good shielding prevents the signals from going in or out. This way the phone disappears in a certain location. It reappears at the same location some time later; while it was in the microwave oven, if the shielding is good enough, nothing will come in or out.
Other fun tricks: are you on GSM? Remove the SIM card, and pop a different one from a different provider. Preferably one from out of the country. Don't do it at the same location, though. Remove and leave at home, go a few km away, pop the other SIM card in. Don't pay for the second one with the same credit card as the first one. And so on.
Any other fun tricks out there?
Cheers!
The interview was entertaining and somewhat insightful. I wish the interviewers would've asked more details about Gosling's current doings, what aspects of NoSQL he's working on, details about the languages, etc. Too much space was allocated to Oracle Venting. I wish the interviewers or Gosling would've devoted more time to more technical stuff and future directions.
**** out of 5 - great job, Basement Coders!
pr3d4t0r
Howdy.
While taste in mice and features vary, one thing I would vouch for, if you're right handed and have a full keyboard, is to learn to use your mouse with your left hand. I worked with Gene Korienek in the early 1990s and we discussed how to optimize mouse motion. Since the page navigation, Return key, and numeric pad are all on your right side, using your mouse with your left hand will make you more effective for some activities such as using spreadsheets, Photoshop, web surfing, etc. I went "mouse southpaw" since then -- super-comfortable.
Now... for programming I use MacVim and a number of plug-ins and extensions. When I'm programming, unless it's something that's got a GUI or it's iPhone/Mac specific, I seldom use the mouse. One of the biggest advantages of using a keyboard instead of a mouse is sensory memory. There are actions in Vim (and possibly TextMate, emacs, etc.) that you can execute automatically, without thinking about the exact key press sequence, and without having to lift your hands off the keyboard. Check into any of these editors, add the appropriate plug-ins (e.g. "UNIX is my IDE") and see what works best for you. I went from keyboard-only (TurboPascal, Turbo C, vi/UNIX) to GUI IDE (Smalltalk/V, Symantec Cafe, Visual Studio, IDEA) back to keyboard-only for most programming tasks. Now my coding is split between keyboard-only (scripting, Java, C, assembler) and GUI/mouse for only a few environments that leave you no other option (Xcode/Interface Builder).
Cheers!
E
I have been an OpenOffice.org supporter and evangelist for many years. It saddens me to see Novell do these things because they at once seem good for their business but place people on the road to vendor lock-in once more. The Microsoft formats are closed and incompatible. The sane approach would be to standardize ODF across the board.
Novell must protect its business as an obligation to its shareholders. In the process, though, they may alienate some of the open-source community supporters to the point where countermeasures may be executed. Forks like this mean that some open-source developers and organizations may ban or license their software in such a way that prevents Novell from sharing the goodies. This in turn results in fragmentation that benefits nobody but Microsoft and its offerings.
This is a master stroke from Microsoft's point of view because this way they may sneak OpenXML into organizations that had otherwise had the sanity to abandon MS-Office and forces them to move in that direction again. Novell gets stuck in the middle, with their leadership getting screwed from both ends (open-source developers and advocates in one corner, and Microsoft in the other) while thinking that they are doing something good. In the end nobody but Microsoft wins this one.
Just say "NO" to OpenXML in an OpenOffice.org fork. Make it an optional package download, and make it a non-default setting, but don't fork the code. In fact, I'd go one step further and make it a requirement for Microsoft Office (and Office Mac) to support ODF if they want OpenXML included in any open-source product. That would make this a two-way street. Are you listening, Novell?
Cheers,
E
Greetings.
There is a wrong perception that large companies don't adopt Linux because they prefer commercial offerings. This is only half right. It's not that they like commercial software per se, or that they don't know or understand the benefits of open-source software. The real issue for the lack of adoption is the perceived legal exposures of running software and becoming liable for it (SCO, anyone?). These large companies would be happy to bring Linux in-house as long as a larger company offers some kind of indemnification clause in their contracts.
Many large companies offer Linux distributions and absorb the indemnification. It's no wonder then that superior distributions like Ubuntu aren't on the enterprise shopping list: there is little or no viable indemnification offered. Red Hat is a big fish among open-source vendors but not large enough to convince many large enterprises to take the plunge. That's why IBM has made a good play in this arena: their Linux offerings are rather crappy, but they offer the magic word: INDEMNIFICATION. This has opened many doors for them that remained shut to other vendors.
An Oracle offering brings the same "large company support" that will let the pussies in legal departments and the dumbass middle managers sleep well at night. Oracle is already known to work well with Linux; couple that that with Red Hat functionality and Oracle support (especially if other Oracle products are involved) and that makes a very attractive proposition for all the parties involved. If Oracle plays this right they can start by offering Red Hat dressed in Oracle garb as they came out of the gate, and then provide a migration path toward Ubuntu or another Linux distribution with better tools.
Oracle didn't get that big by being idiots. They are smart and they are aggressive. I think that this is overall a good thing. It creates more competition for IBM, who perhaps now will actually push for real Linux offerings that work, for Novell with SuSe, for Sun and Solaris, and it opens the door for upstarts like Canonical who are well-positioned to make Ubuntu a household name. Last, it will open doors to Linux that would otherwise remain shut. Oracle Linux marks the maturity phase of the first round of consolidation and is the harbinger of the next distribution wars. The next five years will be very interesting.
Cheers,
Eugene Ciurana
...with great power comes great responsibility.
I believe that Ubuntu is on the right track because of the rules they have in place. Some open-source advocates confuse structure with lack of innovation, or with coerciveness, and thus eschew these rules which, in the long run, will hurt their cause. Anarchist behavior appears to be a good thing only in fiction. In real life it leads to erosion of the institutions that harbor it.
The open-source community wields great power now that our software is being adopted for solving a wider range of problems. Our responsibility is to create an environment that will promote cooperation and the continuous evolution of our products and services. An environment where flamewars and egos are flaring all the time will always end up hurting the projects until they wilt and die. This hurts our collective credibility and hinders our ability to bring more open-source projects in-house.
Cheers,
E
Greetings.
.com stores with their real stores. Apple probably wouldn't make the movies available through Blockbuster/Hollywood Video/etc. that would be just the channel to make them available for the computer-phobes or non-broadband customers.
My first reaction was the same as many here when I read the article: why bother, if you have broadband?
Cringely gives a good answer toward the end: because not everyone we know is using computers or cares about broadband. Outside our techie world, some people find the computer either intimidating or perfectly acceptable running on a 56 kbps modem. Thus, the ability to dock and iPod and refresh its contents at a local store isn't that far-fetched.
If you look at some of the big box retailers' strategies, they're all leveraging their on-line stores against their bricks-n-mortar stores, creating a continuum rather than a separate experience. They are integrating their
Now... coming back to reality... where on earth does Cringely get this stuff? Very entertaining, good speculation... but just that, in the end. Is anyone keeping track of which of his write ups wind up being accurate?
Cheers,
Eugene