8. What is the on-call rotation schedule?
7. In the last year, how many times has the on-call person been called?
4. Can I schedule vacations around the holidays?
I thought the idea was good, the execution was poor.
As somebody who used to live off the nightly builds, I can say that the problem wasn't that the execution was poor - it was that the ideas changed too much, too frequently. Have a vision, document it, and then build it. The programmers appeared to be tasked with executing visions that changed dramatically on a monthly basis.
I would test whole featuresets only to find them disappear completely out of the next build. My (least) favorite was the RSS integration. It's integrated with the bookmarks, no wait it's a separate thing, no wait it's gone altogether. Huh? Development time was wasted, testing time was wasted, and users got flaked out.
Think about this in conjunction with the one-laptop-per-child project: what if third world countries suddenly had access to Wikipedia? Where would you put your hundred million bucks to buy content that would make the human race better off simply by having access to this knowledge?
I understand why people are suggesting basic textbooks, but they're taking too much for granted.
Start by acquiring the best English skills courses so that these billions of third world kids will be able to understand first world content.
Giving a kid a laptop only gets them so far: they have to be able to understand what they're viewing. That's where the $100 mil could really leverage all of Wikipedia's existing content. Make it easy for these kids to learn English, no matter which language they're starting from.
I made the switch a couple of weeks ago, but the interesting thing I'm noticing is that the tech community, the network admins and programmers, are going to be the last ones to make the switch, and that's why it's going to catch us geeks off-guard.
In my day job, I'm a SQL Server administrator. I rely on MS tools to get my job done, and I can't do my job on OSX - or at least, I couldn't until Parallels came along. Boot Camp is a nice idea, but since I have to have SQL Server Management Studio running all day, dual-booting would mean I'd have a shiny laptop running Windows. Big flippin' deal.
Most of the guys around me said, "Why make the 'switch' when all you're doing is running Windows AND Mac OSX all the time? How can that possibly save you time or energy?" Well, it doesn't - it involves more work - but I'm having a great time doing it. As I write this, my keyboard is glowing. That's coolness.
All of us network admins and infrastructure managers rely on more Windows-centric tools than we'd like, more stuff tying us down to Windows longer than our end users. The end users seem to use more generic applications like Office, and they're able to make the switch even faster than the supposedly high-tech guys.
Normally, when a Big New Thing comes out, the geeks are the first one to make the jump. Apple's making it so easy to make the switch that the push is coming up from the end users. Attention, Windows network admins: there are probably people right now in your organization thinking about making their next computer an Apple. Be prepared when they start asking support questions like, "Which of our applications don't run on a Mac, and why?"
VIP Gold, VIP Platinum? What savant was in charge of coming up with the names?
If only they had a Champagne Room category, then I would know for sure.
Re:Close, but not close enough
on
RFID Cookware
·
· Score: 1
What happens the day you lose power? Or are hit by a storm that knocks out all your electricity? Are you going to starve to death?
My post was a *joke*, Sherlock. Besides, I live on Miami Beach, two blocks from the ocean's edge. I went through three hurricanes last fall including Katrina, Rita and Wilma, and had no power for a while. I lived. Deal with it.
Close, but not close enough
on
RFID Cookware
·
· Score: 3, Funny
The next thing would be pantry integration. I'd like to pick out a stack of recipe cards, drop them into a pile, and have the system figure out what I need to buy versus what I've already got - especially since it could link with RFID tags of the stuff in my cupboard. Granted, it won't know which items are full and which are empty, so it won't know if I've got enough vegetable oil for the particular recipe, but it can always print out a list of exceptions that I could investigate.
Then, I need it to integrate with my wine cellar, so it can see whether I've got an appopriately matching wine for each of the recipes.
And it'd obviously have an internet connection, so it could check prices on each of the ingredients. I could put in my work address and my girlfriend's work address, and it could balance out the list and prices so it could SMS me (or her, depending on the shop) right before I leave work.
Ha! This is Slashdot! Who am I kidding? I don't have a girlfriend, a wine cellar OR a job! Much less RFID cookware, bwahaha. Now pass me that pizza delivery menu.
The really smart prospective employees ask for references from the COMPANY. They check with people who are currently their employers. I've been on the interviewer's end and heard it asked like this:
"Would it be okay if I took a couple of my future coworkers to lunch to talk about their jobs? I'd be interested to hear the challenges they face day-to-day."
After the interviewer gets over the initial shock, their next reaction is a great measuring stick. Either they get it, and they hook you up with a couple of your peers, or they have something to hide. I totally understood why the prospective new-hires were asking.
And the really smart people don't even ask the interviewer: they track down a couple of internet-visible people at the company and start the reference process themselves. I had an IM come in one morning asking, "Hi, I'm ____ and I've got an interview tomorrow with your company. Could I ask you a few questions about the environment to make sure I'm a good fit?"
At first I thought she (yes, she) was trying to get an angle in, trying to say she knew me, but over the course of a few questions, she made it really clear that she just wanted to know if we were a good company to work for, if her piercings and dyed hair would be a problem, what the work hours were like, etc.
Just from that ten-minute IM chat, I called her future boss and said, "You have to hire this one. She's got cajones and business smarts."
These days you can just carry a USB DVORAK (or COLEMAK) keyboard around with you and plug it in wherever youre using it.
Sounds great! So where do I order the ergonomic USB COLEMAK keyboard?
Oh, wait, lemme guess - from the same store that carries the COLEMAK laptops, right? Got it. It's filed right here under my stack of pamphlets for functioning perpetual motion machines.
Name me one browser that can search all files, songs, web history, IM conversations, emails, etc on your desktop by typing in a single search word.
In Internet Explorer, type "r00tm3" and you immediately get full access to all files, songs, web history, bank accounts, system files, etc. Is that what you were asking?
I've had mine in my pockets alongside keys, my cell phone, and my wallet at different times, and it's still as slick and shiny as the day I've bought it.
What's the secret? Until you get a case (you did order a case, right?) put the display side facing your leg. Hello, that's why one side is metal, for some protection.
If your hairy legs scratch the screen through your pants pocket, then you've got other problems.
This whole thing sounds like people who would carry a TabletPC inside a hard briefcase with their pens, calculators, and change jangling around inside, and then complain that the screen got scratched. Hello, it's an MP3 player, not a Rolex Submariner.
I tend to think it would be possible (perhaps even easy) to implement the ipod's trademark jog-wheel on a touch screen
Think again - touchscreens have no tactile feedback. One of the strengths of the iPod's interface is that you can use it without looking at the screen. I challenge you to do that accurately on a touchscreen device.
product that nobody really wants apart from the usual Mac-zealot contingent who'd buy a turd if it droped from Steve Jobs' ass.
This phone is from Ed Zander's ass, not Steve's, because it's Motorola shit. Apple shit is identifiable by the white and pastel colors, and it has smooth, curved edges to make it easier on the body. Motorola shit has techy-looking colors and rough, almost serrated edges, because it's sold by phone companies, and they want you to feel it when they screw you in the pooper.
For a start, it means that to buy or sell effectively, you would need to be online a lot of the time.
I've only done around a hundred auctions, but my experience has been that the questions come 18-24 hours before the auction ends. People looking much earlier than that tend to know exactly what they're looking for and don't ask many questions. People looking later than that are grabbing the first thing they see. People in that 18-24 hour time range, though, seem to ask lots of questions trying to figure out whether or not they should bid.
And of course, these people don't even end up winning the auctions. They're the ones who are new to Ebay, don't understand the concept of sniping, think that they're really going to get a Tivo for the $1 opening bid, and even still, they want to ask questions first about the item.
Great, so now instead of people emailing me about my Ebay auctions, they can call me at any time and ask, "How does that there Tivo thing work anyway? Can I watch HBO if I don't have cable? Can you explain it to me?"
New Orleans is alive with unique culture and vast history.
If by "unique culture" you mean the teeming bacteria living in the floating bodies, and by "vast history" you mean the oral stories of people being raped and shot in the Superdome, then yes, yes, New Orleans is "alive". Mighty alive.
How about handing out some of the cheap pre-paid phones with service.
Because most cell towers were wiped out in the hurricane. T-Mobile didn't have that strong of a signal down here as it is, and now it's nonexistent. Any gifts of cell phones would have no value for weeks, if not months, and people need communications now.
Same with your suggestion about trucks with GPRS data connections. The trucks won't have signal - end of story. You need satellite phones for most areas right now, and that's not something T-Mobile can offer.
Slashdot Mirror
I blogged about my top 10 questions to ask before taking an IT job, and some of 'em included:
8. What is the on-call rotation schedule?
7. In the last year, how many times has the on-call person been called?
4. Can I schedule vacations around the holidays?
I thought the idea was good, the execution was poor.
As somebody who used to live off the nightly builds, I can say that the problem wasn't that the execution was poor - it was that the ideas changed too much, too frequently. Have a vision, document it, and then build it. The programmers appeared to be tasked with executing visions that changed dramatically on a monthly basis.
I would test whole featuresets only to find them disappear completely out of the next build. My (least) favorite was the RSS integration. It's integrated with the bookmarks, no wait it's a separate thing, no wait it's gone altogether. Huh? Development time was wasted, testing time was wasted, and users got flaked out.
I handed a boss of mine a study paper about 12 years ago that covered probably 90% of the claims.
Don't go admitting that publicly. Verizon might sue you next.
Think about this in conjunction with the one-laptop-per-child project: what if third world countries suddenly had access to Wikipedia? Where would you put your hundred million bucks to buy content that would make the human race better off simply by having access to this knowledge?
I understand why people are suggesting basic textbooks, but they're taking too much for granted.
Start by acquiring the best English skills courses so that these billions of third world kids will be able to understand first world content.
Giving a kid a laptop only gets them so far: they have to be able to understand what they're viewing. That's where the $100 mil could really leverage all of Wikipedia's existing content. Make it easy for these kids to learn English, no matter which language they're starting from.
Hi, my name is Brent, and I've got a problem.
Oh, wait, wrong meeting.
I made the switch a couple of weeks ago, but the interesting thing I'm noticing is that the tech community, the network admins and programmers, are going to be the last ones to make the switch, and that's why it's going to catch us geeks off-guard.
In my day job, I'm a SQL Server administrator. I rely on MS tools to get my job done, and I can't do my job on OSX - or at least, I couldn't until Parallels came along. Boot Camp is a nice idea, but since I have to have SQL Server Management Studio running all day, dual-booting would mean I'd have a shiny laptop running Windows. Big flippin' deal.
Most of the guys around me said, "Why make the 'switch' when all you're doing is running Windows AND Mac OSX all the time? How can that possibly save you time or energy?" Well, it doesn't - it involves more work - but I'm having a great time doing it. As I write this, my keyboard is glowing. That's coolness.
All of us network admins and infrastructure managers rely on more Windows-centric tools than we'd like, more stuff tying us down to Windows longer than our end users. The end users seem to use more generic applications like Office, and they're able to make the switch even faster than the supposedly high-tech guys.
Normally, when a Big New Thing comes out, the geeks are the first one to make the jump. Apple's making it so easy to make the switch that the push is coming up from the end users. Attention, Windows network admins: there are probably people right now in your organization thinking about making their next computer an Apple. Be prepared when they start asking support questions like, "Which of our applications don't run on a Mac, and why?"
VIP Gold, VIP Platinum? What savant was in charge of coming up with the names?
If only they had a Champagne Room category, then I would know for sure.
What happens the day you lose power? Or are hit by a storm that knocks out all your electricity? Are you going to starve to death?
My post was a *joke*, Sherlock. Besides, I live on Miami Beach, two blocks from the ocean's edge. I went through three hurricanes last fall including Katrina, Rita and Wilma, and had no power for a while. I lived. Deal with it.
The next thing would be pantry integration. I'd like to pick out a stack of recipe cards, drop them into a pile, and have the system figure out what I need to buy versus what I've already got - especially since it could link with RFID tags of the stuff in my cupboard. Granted, it won't know which items are full and which are empty, so it won't know if I've got enough vegetable oil for the particular recipe, but it can always print out a list of exceptions that I could investigate.
Then, I need it to integrate with my wine cellar, so it can see whether I've got an appopriately matching wine for each of the recipes.
And it'd obviously have an internet connection, so it could check prices on each of the ingredients. I could put in my work address and my girlfriend's work address, and it could balance out the list and prices so it could SMS me (or her, depending on the shop) right before I leave work.
Ha! This is Slashdot! Who am I kidding? I don't have a girlfriend, a wine cellar OR a job! Much less RFID cookware, bwahaha. Now pass me that pizza delivery menu.
I heard that Linux User Groups were a good place to meet chicks? Is this true?
Yes, in the sense that you'll meet the "chicks" you've been having virtual sex with.
I'd hate to be the guy who realizes he sold his Take Two stock to Jack Thompson.
The really smart prospective employees ask for references from the COMPANY. They check with people who are currently their employers. I've been on the interviewer's end and heard it asked like this:
"Would it be okay if I took a couple of my future coworkers to lunch to talk about their jobs? I'd be interested to hear the challenges they face day-to-day."
After the interviewer gets over the initial shock, their next reaction is a great measuring stick. Either they get it, and they hook you up with a couple of your peers, or they have something to hide. I totally understood why the prospective new-hires were asking.
And the really smart people don't even ask the interviewer: they track down a couple of internet-visible people at the company and start the reference process themselves. I had an IM come in one morning asking, "Hi, I'm ____ and I've got an interview tomorrow with your company. Could I ask you a few questions about the environment to make sure I'm a good fit?"
At first I thought she (yes, she) was trying to get an angle in, trying to say she knew me, but over the course of a few questions, she made it really clear that she just wanted to know if we were a good company to work for, if her piercings and dyed hair would be a problem, what the work hours were like, etc.
Just from that ten-minute IM chat, I called her future boss and said, "You have to hire this one. She's got cajones and business smarts."
These days you can just carry a USB DVORAK (or COLEMAK) keyboard around with you and plug it in wherever youre using it.
Sounds great! So where do I order the ergonomic USB COLEMAK keyboard?
Oh, wait, lemme guess - from the same store that carries the COLEMAK laptops, right? Got it. It's filed right here under my stack of pamphlets for functioning perpetual motion machines.
These days I'm running a multi-terabyte data warehouse ... I could run my warehouse on the db2 express version for $1500 (total).
No, you can't. Oracle XE, the free version, is restricted to 4gb of data. Not 4tb, 4 gigs.
That's not a data warehouse, that's a data convenience store.
Name me one browser that can search all files, songs, web history, IM conversations, emails, etc on your desktop by typing in a single search word.
In Internet Explorer, type "r00tm3" and you immediately get full access to all files, songs, web history, bank accounts, system files, etc. Is that what you were asking?
You have got to stop saying "hello". You sound like an airheaded teenage girl.
... well, like, hello, you know.
Sorry, I was simultaneously chatting in one of those teen sex forums trying to pass myself off as a
I've had mine in my pockets alongside keys, my cell phone, and my wallet at different times, and it's still as slick and shiny as the day I've bought it.
What's the secret? Until you get a case (you did order a case, right?) put the display side facing your leg. Hello, that's why one side is metal, for some protection.
If your hairy legs scratch the screen through your pants pocket, then you've got other problems.
This whole thing sounds like people who would carry a TabletPC inside a hard briefcase with their pens, calculators, and change jangling around inside, and then complain that the screen got scratched. Hello, it's an MP3 player, not a Rolex Submariner.
Or a heck of a drug addiction recovery plan. Betty Ford meets the holodeck.
I tend to think it would be possible (perhaps even easy) to implement the ipod's trademark jog-wheel on a touch screen
Think again - touchscreens have no tactile feedback. One of the strengths of the iPod's interface is that you can use it without looking at the screen. I challenge you to do that accurately on a touchscreen device.
Would you let a slashdot member cut *your* hair?
You're asking the wrong people. The readers here (also Slashdot members) typically don't care what their hair looks like.
In fact, most of them would probably let Linux Torvalds take a pair of clippers to their hair in exchange for spending the half hour talking to him.
product that nobody really wants apart from the usual Mac-zealot contingent who'd buy a turd if it droped from Steve Jobs' ass.
This phone is from Ed Zander's ass, not Steve's, because it's Motorola shit. Apple shit is identifiable by the white and pastel colors, and it has smooth, curved edges to make it easier on the body. Motorola shit has techy-looking colors and rough, almost serrated edges, because it's sold by phone companies, and they want you to feel it when they screw you in the pooper.
For a start, it means that to buy or sell effectively, you would need to be online a lot of the time.
I've only done around a hundred auctions, but my experience has been that the questions come 18-24 hours before the auction ends. People looking much earlier than that tend to know exactly what they're looking for and don't ask many questions. People looking later than that are grabbing the first thing they see. People in that 18-24 hour time range, though, seem to ask lots of questions trying to figure out whether or not they should bid.
And of course, these people don't even end up winning the auctions. They're the ones who are new to Ebay, don't understand the concept of sniping, think that they're really going to get a Tivo for the $1 opening bid, and even still, they want to ask questions first about the item.
Great, so now instead of people emailing me about my Ebay auctions, they can call me at any time and ask, "How does that there Tivo thing work anyway? Can I watch HBO if I don't have cable? Can you explain it to me?"
No, the GPL3 will not have these provision? How do I know?
Because you phrase everything as a question so people give you all the answers?
New Orleans is alive with unique culture and vast history.
If by "unique culture" you mean the teeming bacteria living in the floating bodies, and by "vast history" you mean the oral stories of people being raped and shot in the Superdome, then yes, yes, New Orleans is "alive". Mighty alive.
How about handing out some of the cheap pre-paid phones with service.
Because most cell towers were wiped out in the hurricane. T-Mobile didn't have that strong of a signal down here as it is, and now it's nonexistent. Any gifts of cell phones would have no value for weeks, if not months, and people need communications now.
Same with your suggestion about trucks with GPRS data connections. The trucks won't have signal - end of story. You need satellite phones for most areas right now, and that's not something T-Mobile can offer.