... Chrome OS or the expensive equivalent macOS and be done with it.
The only reason to use Windows is if you're running a specific type of software that only runs on Windows, like some engineering tool or some special creative or scientific software. Otherwise I'd recommend anything other than Windows.
If you're running a setup that requires anti-virus software on the client then you're running the wrong setup. Plain and simple.
Why, are a few billion people lining up to send stuff into orbit? A billion people probably do order stuff between amazon.com, alibaba, and Walmart everyday. Flag as Inappropriate
"I send a post-carriage from Berlin to Potsdam every day and they're not even booked out. I don't understand why people would want to invest into this crazy harebrained extremely expensive train thing." (paraphrased) - German Reichspostminister roughly 2 centuries ago on this new "steam engine train fad" that was popping up everywhere.
In case you've missed it: It's SPACE. As in FREAKIN' HUGE. With tons of planets, astroids, dward-plantes and stuff ready to be colonized in our solar system alone. Yeah, sure, technology isn't there yet, but dividing cost-to-orbit by 15 is a huge leap on the way and will change perspective and usage of space travel notably vis-a-vis what is possible today.
Watch what happens when their reusable rocket thing actually finally pans out. They're still somewhat in the experimentation/development phase of that. But once they can relyably reuse their rockets on a regular basis, price to orbit will drop by orders of magnitude and change humanities entire perspective on space travel, Neuromancer style. SpaceX could easily become the most valuable company ever on an entirely new scale.
Considering how things are going and how Elon Musk and the people he get's on board have a reputation for getting the job done this evaluation is entirely justified IMHO.
Well, Duh. That's just what Apple wants. PWAs are a cornerstone of Googles "Everything is Web" Strategy. Apple and Google are direct adversaries in this field. Apple says "Buy our devices". Google says "Buy what you want, but use our services." However, if Google lures everybody to the web for everything using PWAs, WASM and such, they will create further incentives for people to move to Chrome OS and the Google ecosystem entirely. This is something Apple does not want. All-in-all Google has a significant long-term edge with Chromebooks basically being the poor mans MacBook and Apple relying on being percieved as a high-profile luxury brand for hardware.
Apple would so whish to be able to kill off the uibiquitous web in favour of native platforms and their strength which in turn would strengthen the Apple position. Yet it may actually be to late for that.
The chance of romantic entanglement and drama within the lead team in a critical phase of the company that is to be invested in goes from 0 to "definitely existent" in a mixed team with a single woman. That tips the risk assessment straight out of into no-go territory. I'd be curious about finding for all female teams. They'd probably have it a bit easier.
We do less male stuff, plain and simple. Testosterone is down from sitting on the couch, getting fat, drinking to much beer, stimulating with videogames rather than real stuggles and not work harder physical labour as we used to. Porn feeds an epidemic of erectile dysfunction that has to play out into sperm quality and count at some point. And on top of that the guilt-show western males have to go through hamper true male heterosexuality - a very important aspect consistently left out of this shitty ongoing gender debate that seems to totally ignore hetero males other than in shaming them.
Anecdotal point in case: I startet social dancing (Tango) about a decade back. Curiously, this old-school supposedly macho dance is consistently overbooked with often very well educated women who apparently really desire a strong man to hug and lead them at regular intervals. I just came back from a Tango trip to Moscow two days ago, which drove this impression home tenfold for me once again. Anyhow, after starting Tango I started to finally get the encounters with women I had so desperately desired since my teenages, often just consisting of firmly hugging a beautiful lady for an extended period of time, and soon noticed my body hair getting significantly darker and my voice lowering. Clear sings of testosterone going up to normal levels. That, as you can imagine, actually did amp my attractieness to the ladies quite a bit.
Now being in my mid/late 40ies I'm also slowly getting a grip on the "male guilt" thing that comes with growing up in an often wrongly feminist society. I'm leaving nerdy escapism more and more behind (Slashdot being still one of the exceptions) and have by now had enough sexual experiences to finally feel OK as a white hetero man. Not perfect, but OK. The guilt thing withdrawing includes a healthy perspective on porn and masturbating (i.e. not that spectacular as the real thing and often not worth it) which actually go back to 'normal' levels once confidence sets in and there is emotional room for escapism and numbing to retreat.
Long story short: We basically lack most of the natural environment that makes men men and have to work it out in other ways. Ad in fathers either chickening out of their responsiblities or - as in the US - too much in a legal risk to get married these days and you completed the picture. That sperm count goes down in these times comes as no real surprise to me.
Do you wrest projects away from others? On my last gig I was the only programmer in a team of 30, working part-time. Not much to wrestle away from anybody. Before that? No, not that I can think of. Really not my style. As a senior turned scrum master doing tooling on the side - the only gig I can think of that would have given me the chance to wrestle something away from others - I had really no interest in doing so. Nor could I have. 35 people working on very special details each. And that was a very good team btw. The "wrestle projects away" actually is a problem with one of my collegues. I'm not sure if he's shielding problems from the PMs. I do get the impression at times.
Do you try to run the entire show yourself? Hell no. Especially not in a media agency. I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid. Besides, I couldn't run things. Not in an agency. Not my profession. And whatever nerds may think, media isn't all about buzzwords. Often they are part of the deal, but handling finiky and clueless customers is a skill that I really admire.
Do you kiss your boss's ass while the project implodes around you? Errrm, nope. Usually it's the PMs telling me that their project is imploding. Or not telling me. Or telling me at 4 pm friday afternoon. That's were the incompetence thing comes in. Then I get furious. For obvious reasons. See my parent comment.
Do you fail to take input from others? Input on how to code? Not recently no. But that's because all my peers aren't coders.
There is honest and there is arrogant. What you wrote makes you sound more like the latter. Then maybe you should read it again.
Please wait to write your book until after you have destroyed your own pompous career and have learned something worthwhile about life. After 30+ years of programming I'm pretty confident that my career is well on track. For a guy that did web dev since eons ago that is. Technology wise it's nothing to brag about really, but it did and does get the job done. What more can clients/customers/bosses ask for? And yes, I do think I could fill a few essays with wisdom, if not a small book....
You might have gotten the wrong impression: Most teams I've worked with were/are great. But I've also worked with douchbags running douchebag gigs. That's what my comment above talks about. I thought that was clear. Sorry if it wasn't.
... but from what I can tell they were already 100% annoying 99.9% of the time roughly 3 weeks into the first smartphone introducing them. I have only a few apps allowed to do this and even services that one would deem intelligent (like Google itself) pester me with stuff I'm not interested in - such as traffic and weather in a city 3000 Kilometers away that I left this morning.
FOSS licenses need an update for this type of shit. Preferably with fines attached for polluting FOSS with adware/ad functions. As soon as AI start coding, this sort of thing is going to get worse by orders of magnitude and we need measures in place to prevent the corps from f*cking things up big time.
Meanwhile, could someone please hack this guy's/companies accounts and mess up their life big time in a spectacular way as to teach a lesson to the public? I'm usually on the edge when it comes to vigilant hacking, but this is a case where my vote is a clear yay. I presume you're all with me on this one.
There's an apple vs. android debate going on here. And while I myself use an android phone, I have to say, Apple does have the edge in this department. Their lockdown and app-screening policy basically prevents clueless users from doing to much damage.
And I have to admit, finding the right Android phone is a PITA. I settled for a Moto G5 Plus as my newest, but I'm and expert and know what to look for, am aware of the tradeoffs *and* I know enough to be careful about installing rubbish. Some clueless ord settling for an iPhone even though it's 300 Euros more expensive than an android equivalent (a fact they are blissfully unaware of) might actually be the best choice for them.
In this situation we observe a know effect that appears to be a paradox, but really isn't: That strong brands - such as Apple - actually have an equalising effect on society. You can get a supsidised and/or used iPhone even as a poor guy, but even the richest guy can't get a better one than the current model. It's the same reasone Vertu went broke these days and Apple discontinued their hyper-expensive golden Apple watches a while back.
I presume making a super-expensive iPhone would have the same effect and that they wouldn't keep it around for long. Damage to the brand would be stronger than the profit generated. In making a scarce iPhone, Apple would actually damage the exclusivity of the Apple/iPhone brand. Sort of like some special Coke that costs 1500$ a bottle, like some exclusive Champagne or something. Being exclusive by scarcity would actually damage the equity of the Apple brand and I suspect Apple knows this.
I really think at this stage Apple should settle for the fact that they really just about have covered the global high-margin market on smartphones and should moving into optimising their toolchain and resource usage even further. As a such obscenely rich company they could actually use their power to do some good, like improving the negative impacts of rare earth mining or something. That would be something to brag about as a company.
You know, last night it dawned on my that exactly this subject is one I could actually really write a book on that would actually be really useful to some people. It wouldn't be that long, but I'm sure it would give some insights on how to handle software projects and what they are all about. Often it's the pointy-haired type that simply doesn't have a clue. Or not enough of that. The biggest problem in Germany is that SMEs think computers are some magical thing that you buy and then you sit someone in front of it that "knows this stuff" and then somehow, magically, the money starts rolling in 3 months later.... You hit the nail on the head, pal.
I don't know about you guys, but I have always had way less secrets than they. And I smell a dying project from 10 miles away and turn around and tell it to my peers and boss, straight to their faces.
"This is going to fail at stage so-and-so/in x weeks/months time because of a,b, and c. If we want to prevent this, we have to do x,y and z."
Straight forward.
90% of problems I've had along these lines way because of bosses, PMs and whatnot not being honest with me. Or to stupdi/dumb/out of their depth to get a hold on the problem and deliver on their end.
Likewise, every time my PMs and bosses were honest with me, I had their back.
Need politics rather than tech solutions? I'll give you a technical buzzword ridden writeup/analysis that will get you anything. Need nice and shiny things that move and people can click on? Consider it done. Need to blow up that boring data with some nifty grafics and impressive spreadsheets? Done. Need a devils advocate to point out where the problem is? I'll speak up with a techie voice in the grand meeting and all will shush and hear the clarions call. Need me to pick the hot coals out of the fire with the customers IT dept? No problem, give me a first phone number and I won't stop calling until I got the exact right guy on the other end. And 10 minutes in we'll be the very best buddies.
I'm honest and straight forward, just about always. Be honest with me. If you're not, f*ck you and the horse you rode in on. I'm out and I hope your whole product/project/whatever goes down in a ball of flame. You can use me for politics, but you have to fill me in and I must see where the game is headed. But play me because you think I'm some replacable suit and not the guy actually buidling your actual product and I'm out and I won't have you on any project in any meaningful position ever again - you have proven your incompetence as PM/Boss/CEO.
That's basically the principle I live by doing this IT/development stuff, ever since. I'm the straight forward type, and sometimes people/bosses have taken advantage of that or just didn't catch the drift. But I'm getting better at noticing it.
Lot's of bullshit and stupidity in the web/agency camp, tough space to navigate in the honesty dept. The biggest problem always is when they don't know what they want, but for some bizar reason know when it needs to be finished and how much it may cost. Including a never ending stream of last-minute changes.
So, no, not any real secrets that can sink your business. Actually, more than once my product was mission critical and made the business possible in the first place.
- maintaining a high-traffic quake 3 arena server on company Hardware without anyone noticing
- coming up with elaborate and well worded excuses as to why I don't have time to set up and maintain MS Office 365 and it's groupware mess and have them let the intern/media-communications do it (the poor fellows)
- explaining for the n-th time to the utterly clueless online team and the consultant PMs what the difference between a client and a server is, why versioning is important, that it's not *my* versioning but *our* versioning, why ci is a good idea, why manual ftp and working directly on live is a bad idea
- stareing, day in and day out with awe and amazement at the ultimate shitfest that is WordPresses application architecture and wondering how we as a human race even got this far... That's just from the top of my head.
is a big one for me right now. I'd love to use a Netbook with Linux for serious work but 4 hours of battery life doesn't cut it for me. Hence I'm leaning towards getting a Mac once again. A current day MacBook it would be, even though they are really expensive. Apples power management still rules. My MacBook air from 2011 still gets 4+ hours out of one charge.
I'd feel uncomfortable carrying around more than 350 Euros in my pocket and more that 200 Euros for an extended period of time. It would take getting used to and I wouldn't do it for long. I usually have between 15 and 80 Euros in my purse. In Germany I usually have an ATM in the vincinity of 500 meters when I need larger amounts of cash quickly and we often pay with the typical "Electronic Cash" card that just about every grown up has in Germany. The only reason for me to use cash regularly is to keep track of my spending. Which, IMHO, is a good reason to do it.
Personally, I make a benefit/risk analsysis for everything I own and/or carry around. If it's valuable, I try to be extra careful with it. Cash or thing, doesn't matter. The most valuable things I have are my MacBook Air (1400 Euros), my bike (650 Euros) and my smartphone (300 Euros). My bike is just below the line of "stealability" and I bought it with exactly that in mind. Decals removed, taped saddle, not that clean and well used. Because I have the largest lock I could get and I only lock it on to things in public places where it's tricky to attempt to lockpick it I'm fairly secure the chances of it being stolen are low enough. My MB Air I always keep around me as I do with my phone. My data is backed up and I've rehearsed what I'd do in a phone killed/stolen desaster.
... now that would be interesting. Give, they'd probably kick the ball at 300km/h, unstoppable for mere mortals, scoring goals from every position and across the field.
But it would be a neat step forward in engineering none-the-less.
... like making me fly, giving me the body of a well-trained Ryan Gosling and making all good looking girls wanting to have sex with me I would consider buying it for that price.
Other than that: No.
Just got a Moto G5 Plus. Still a compromise. I wanted a 6"+ phablet with massive battery live, rugged case, stock android and uncastrated memory. Huawei Mate 9 and Xiaomi Mi Max came resonably close to those specs but I steered clear for various resons. The Moto G5 Plus but it's the best compromise. 32GB storage, 3GB RAM, good camera, near stock android. Common and as such cases and protective glas easyly available. 280 Euros. Close to the maximum I'm willing to spend on a smartphone. I would've stuck with my Moto G2, but it only has 8GB memory - which is a drag.
Given that, at the current rate, I replace my phone roughly every 3 years spending 1200€ would be a waste of money.
Age of Planshopping and Flaking? Yes. Golden? Wouldn't call it that.
Here's the deal: Social media and always on culture shorten attention spans to a minimum and cyberpunk culture disintegrates social ties we've had since the early age of man. Planshopping and bailing are a sideeffect of this. I dislike it a lot and try to sniff out and steer clear of people who indulge in this before wasting my time with them. Likewise I try my hardest to cherish the people who can treat me fair and with respect, keep an appointment and don't need to be fumbling on their smartphone every odd minute.
The way to deal with this is, of course, to slow electronic interaction to a more managable level. I get annoyed when I message with more than 3 people at a time and even that is too much. I only recieve something like 5 meaningful non-bot emails a week and write roughly 2 or 3. Which is exactly the amount I can handle and has been every since the mid-90ies when I started using e-mail.
I consider much of our allways-online social networking culture a mental illness epidemic and avoid it as much as I can. Treat me like a single-use friend and I will try my very best to avoid you like the plague and ignore you in the future. Although it really rubs me the wrong way to treat people like an asshole, even though they did it with me.
The per-item value of trinkets and doohikies is rapidly declining, as are the supposed values of some tacky, commercial online/web services and appy app-apps. Protonet just closed shop after being a big crown-funding darling child just 3 years ago. We're seeing the same with Rocket, errrm Rippoff Internet and countless other blowhard startup projects. Jawbone had their jawbone thingie but wanted to extend it beyond it as fast as possible and they failed. People don't seem to realise that it's mostly about big bets and very little substance.
The first jawbone device was a neat idea for the quantitive-self crowd and could've carried on as some special must-have device for the hippster sportive folks, they should've stuck with it and not inflated their brand so much so fast.
The most valuable thing today is peoples time and attention, as the most valuable thing in the cities today aren't cars but parking spaces. It will take some time and a few more crashes before the economy adapts. That's my suspicion anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
... Chrome OS or the expensive equivalent macOS and be done with it.
The only reason to use Windows is if you're running a specific type of software that only runs on Windows, like some engineering tool or some special creative or scientific software. Otherwise I'd recommend anything other than Windows.
If you're running a setup that requires anti-virus software on the client then you're running the wrong setup. Plain and simple.
My 2 eurocents.
Why, are a few billion people lining up to send stuff into orbit? A billion people probably do order stuff between amazon.com, alibaba, and Walmart everyday.
Flag as Inappropriate
"I send a post-carriage from Berlin to Potsdam every day and they're not even booked out. I don't understand why people would want to invest into this crazy harebrained extremely expensive train thing." (paraphrased) - German Reichspostminister roughly 2 centuries ago on this new "steam engine train fad" that was popping up everywhere.
In case you've missed it: It's SPACE. As in FREAKIN' HUGE. With tons of planets, astroids, dward-plantes and stuff ready to be colonized in our solar system alone. Yeah, sure, technology isn't there yet, but dividing cost-to-orbit by 15 is a huge leap on the way and will change perspective and usage of space travel notably vis-a-vis what is possible today.
Watch what happens when their reusable rocket thing actually finally pans out. They're still somewhat in the experimentation/development phase of that. But once they can relyably reuse their rockets on a regular basis, price to orbit will drop by orders of magnitude and change humanities entire perspective on space travel, Neuromancer style. SpaceX could easily become the most valuable company ever on an entirely new scale.
Considering how things are going and how Elon Musk and the people he get's on board have a reputation for getting the job done this evaluation is entirely justified IMHO.
Well, Duh. That's just what Apple wants. PWAs are a cornerstone of Googles "Everything is Web" Strategy. Apple and Google are direct adversaries in this field.
Apple says "Buy our devices". Google says "Buy what you want, but use our services."
However, if Google lures everybody to the web for everything using PWAs, WASM and such, they will create further incentives for people to move to Chrome OS and the Google ecosystem entirely. This is something Apple does not want. All-in-all Google has a significant long-term edge with Chromebooks basically being the poor mans MacBook and Apple relying on being percieved as a high-profile luxury brand for hardware.
Apple would so whish to be able to kill off the uibiquitous web in favour of native platforms and their strength which in turn would strengthen the Apple position. Yet it may actually be to late for that.
We'll see how this plays out.
The chance of romantic entanglement and drama within the lead team in a critical phase of the company that is to be invested in goes from 0 to "definitely existent" in a mixed team with a single woman. That tips the risk assessment straight out of into no-go territory.
I'd be curious about finding for all female teams. They'd probably have it a bit easier.
We do less male stuff, plain and simple. Testosterone is down from sitting on the couch, getting fat, drinking to much beer, stimulating with videogames rather than real stuggles and not work harder physical labour as we used to. Porn feeds an epidemic of erectile dysfunction that has to play out into sperm quality and count at some point. And on top of that the guilt-show western males have to go through hamper true male heterosexuality - a very important aspect consistently left out of this shitty ongoing gender debate that seems to totally ignore hetero males other than in shaming them.
Anecdotal point in case: I startet social dancing (Tango) about a decade back. Curiously, this old-school supposedly macho dance is consistently overbooked with often very well educated women who apparently really desire a strong man to hug and lead them at regular intervals. I just came back from a Tango trip to Moscow two days ago, which drove this impression home tenfold for me once again.
Anyhow, after starting Tango I started to finally get the encounters with women I had so desperately desired since my teenages, often just consisting of firmly hugging a beautiful lady for an extended period of time, and soon noticed my body hair getting significantly darker and my voice lowering. Clear sings of testosterone going up to normal levels. That, as you can imagine, actually did amp my attractieness to the ladies quite a bit.
Now being in my mid/late 40ies I'm also slowly getting a grip on the "male guilt" thing that comes with growing up in an often wrongly feminist society. I'm leaving nerdy escapism more and more behind (Slashdot being still one of the exceptions) and have by now had enough sexual experiences to finally feel OK as a white hetero man. Not perfect, but OK. The guilt thing withdrawing includes a healthy perspective on porn and masturbating (i.e. not that spectacular as the real thing and often not worth it) which actually go back to 'normal' levels once confidence sets in and there is emotional room for escapism and numbing to retreat.
Long story short: We basically lack most of the natural environment that makes men men and have to work it out in other ways. Ad in fathers either chickening out of their responsiblities or - as in the US - too much in a legal risk to get married these days and you completed the picture. That sperm count goes down in these times comes as no real surprise to me.
My 2 eurocents.
Do you wrest projects away from others?
On my last gig I was the only programmer in a team of 30, working part-time. Not much to wrestle away from anybody. Before that? No, not that I can think of. Really not my style. As a senior turned scrum master doing tooling on the side - the only gig I can think of that would have given me the chance to wrestle something away from others - I had really no interest in doing so. Nor could I have. 35 people working on very special details each. And that was a very good team btw.
The "wrestle projects away" actually is a problem with one of my collegues. I'm not sure if he's shielding problems from the PMs. I do get the impression at times.
Do you try to run the entire show yourself?
Hell no. Especially not in a media agency. I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid.
Besides, I couldn't run things. Not in an agency. Not my profession. And whatever nerds may think, media isn't all about buzzwords. Often they are part of the deal, but handling finiky and clueless customers is a skill that I really admire.
Do you kiss your boss's ass while the project implodes around you?
Errrm, nope. Usually it's the PMs telling me that their project is imploding. Or not telling me.
Or telling me at 4 pm friday afternoon. That's were the incompetence thing comes in. Then I get furious. For obvious reasons. See my parent comment.
Do you fail to take input from others?
Input on how to code? Not recently no. But that's because all my peers aren't coders.
There is honest and there is arrogant. What you wrote makes you sound more like the latter.
Then maybe you should read it again.
Please wait to write your book until after you have destroyed your own pompous career and have learned something worthwhile about life. ...
After 30+ years of programming I'm pretty confident that my career is well on track. For a guy that did web dev since eons ago that is. Technology wise it's nothing to brag about really, but it did and does get the job done. What more can clients/customers/bosses ask for? And yes, I do think I could fill a few essays with wisdom, if not a small book.
You might have gotten the wrong impression: Most teams I've worked with were/are great. But I've also worked with douchbags running douchebag gigs. That's what my comment above talks about. I thought that was clear. Sorry if it wasn't.
All that crap boils down to: "I am the only one that is right. Any failure is someone else's fault."
Where did I say anything that implies only the faintest idea that this is my attitude towards my mistakes?
Or projects with problems?
Please elaborate.
... but from what I can tell they were already 100% annoying 99.9% of the time roughly 3 weeks into the first smartphone introducing them. I have only a few apps allowed to do this and even services that one would deem intelligent (like Google itself) pester me with stuff I'm not interested in - such as traffic and weather in a city 3000 Kilometers away that I left this morning.
Bottom line: Not really news this tidbit.
FOSS licenses need an update for this type of shit. Preferably with fines attached for polluting FOSS with adware/ad functions. As soon as AI start coding, this sort of thing is going to get worse by orders of magnitude and we need measures in place to prevent the corps from f*cking things up big time.
Meanwhile, could someone please hack this guy's/companies accounts and mess up their life big time in a spectacular way as to teach a lesson to the public? I'm usually on the edge when it comes to vigilant hacking, but this is a case where my vote is a clear yay. I presume you're all with me on this one.
[...] "Just fork it" isn't that easy.
That's the very reason we, in the end, need open hardware to be truly free.
There's an apple vs. android debate going on here. And while I myself use an android phone, I have to say, Apple does have the edge in this department. Their lockdown and app-screening policy basically prevents clueless users from doing to much damage.
And I have to admit, finding the right Android phone is a PITA. I settled for a Moto G5 Plus as my newest, but I'm and expert and know what to look for, am aware of the tradeoffs *and* I know enough to be careful about installing rubbish. Some clueless ord settling for an iPhone even though it's 300 Euros more expensive than an android equivalent (a fact they are blissfully unaware of) might actually be the best choice for them.
In this situation we observe a know effect that appears to be a paradox, but really isn't:
That strong brands - such as Apple - actually have an equalising effect on society. You can get a supsidised and/or used iPhone even as a poor guy, but even the richest guy can't get a better one than the current model. It's the same reasone Vertu went broke these days and Apple discontinued their hyper-expensive golden Apple watches a while back.
I presume making a super-expensive iPhone would have the same effect and that they wouldn't keep it around for long. Damage to the brand would be stronger than the profit generated. In making a scarce iPhone, Apple would actually damage the exclusivity of the Apple/iPhone brand. Sort of like some special Coke that costs 1500$ a bottle, like some exclusive Champagne or something. Being exclusive by scarcity would actually damage the equity of the Apple brand and I suspect Apple knows this.
I really think at this stage Apple should settle for the fact that they really just about have covered the global high-margin market on smartphones and should moving into optimising their toolchain and resource usage even further. As a such obscenely rich company they could actually use their power to do some good, like improving the negative impacts of rare earth mining or something. That would be something to brag about as a company.
My 2 Eurocents.
Thanks. I'll try to memorize that. :-)
Please write a book.
You know, last night it dawned on my that exactly this subject is one I could actually really write a book on that would actually be really useful to some people. It wouldn't be that long, but I'm sure it would give some insights on how to handle software projects and what they are all about. Often it's the pointy-haired type that simply doesn't have a clue. Or not enough of that. The biggest problem in Germany is that SMEs think computers are some magical thing that you buy and then you sit someone in front of it that "knows this stuff" and then somehow, magically, the money starts rolling in 3 months later. ...
You hit the nail on the head, pal.
I don't know about you guys, but I have always had way less secrets than they.
And I smell a dying project from 10 miles away and turn around and tell it to my peers and boss, straight to their faces.
"This is going to fail at stage so-and-so/in x weeks/months time because of a,b, and c.
If we want to prevent this, we have to do x,y and z."
Straight forward.
90% of problems I've had along these lines way because of bosses, PMs and whatnot not being honest with me. Or to stupdi/dumb/out of their depth to get a hold on the problem and deliver on their end.
Likewise, every time my PMs and bosses were honest with me, I had their back.
Need politics rather than tech solutions? I'll give you a technical buzzword ridden writeup/analysis that will get you anything.
Need nice and shiny things that move and people can click on? Consider it done.
Need to blow up that boring data with some nifty grafics and impressive spreadsheets? Done.
Need a devils advocate to point out where the problem is? I'll speak up with a techie voice in the grand meeting and all will shush and hear the clarions call.
Need me to pick the hot coals out of the fire with the customers IT dept? No problem, give me a first phone number and I won't stop calling until I got the exact right guy on the other end. And 10 minutes in we'll be the very best buddies.
I'm honest and straight forward, just about always. Be honest with me. If you're not, f*ck you and the horse you rode in on. I'm out and I hope your whole product/project/whatever goes down in a ball of flame. You can use me for politics, but you have to fill me in and I must see where the game is headed. But play me because you think I'm some replacable suit and not the guy actually buidling your actual product and I'm out and I won't have you on any project in any meaningful position ever again - you have proven your incompetence as PM/Boss/CEO.
That's basically the principle I live by doing this IT/development stuff, ever since. I'm the straight forward type, and sometimes people/bosses have taken advantage of that or just didn't catch the drift. But I'm getting better at noticing it.
Lot's of bullshit and stupidity in the web/agency camp, tough space to navigate in the honesty dept. The biggest problem always is when they don't know what they want, but for some bizar reason know when it needs to be finished and how much it may cost. Including a never ending stream of last-minute changes.
So, no, not any real secrets that can sink your business. Actually, more than once my product was mission critical and made the business possible in the first place.
- maintaining a high-traffic quake 3 arena server on company Hardware without anyone noticing
- coming up with elaborate and well worded excuses as to why I don't have time to set up and maintain MS Office 365 and it's groupware mess and have them let the intern/media-communications do it (the poor fellows)
- explaining for the n-th time to the utterly clueless online team and the consultant PMs what the difference between a client and a server is, why versioning is important, that it's not *my* versioning but *our* versioning, why ci is a good idea, why manual ftp and working directly on live is a bad idea
- stareing, day in and day out with awe and amazement at the ultimate shitfest that is WordPresses application architecture and wondering how we as a human race even got this far ... That's just from the top of my head.
is a big one for me right now. I'd love to use a Netbook with Linux for serious work but 4 hours of battery life doesn't cut it for me. Hence I'm leaning towards getting a Mac once again. A current day MacBook it would be, even though they are really expensive. Apples power management still rules. My MacBook air from 2011 still gets 4+ hours out of one charge.
... to a certain degree.
So is carrying cash.
I'd feel uncomfortable carrying around more than 350 Euros in my pocket and more that 200 Euros for an extended period of time. It would take getting used to and I wouldn't do it for long. I usually have between 15 and 80 Euros in my purse. In Germany I usually have an ATM in the vincinity of 500 meters when I need larger amounts of cash quickly and we often pay with the typical "Electronic Cash" card that just about every grown up has in Germany. The only reason for me to use cash regularly is to keep track of my spending. Which, IMHO, is a good reason to do it.
Personally, I make a benefit/risk analsysis for everything I own and/or carry around.
If it's valuable, I try to be extra careful with it. Cash or thing, doesn't matter. The most valuable things I have are my MacBook Air (1400 Euros), my bike (650 Euros) and my smartphone (300 Euros). My bike is just below the line of "stealability" and I bought it with exactly that in mind. Decals removed, taped saddle, not that clean and well used. Because I have the largest lock I could get and I only lock it on to things in public places where it's tricky to attempt to lockpick it I'm fairly secure the chances of it being stolen are low enough. My MB Air I always keep around me as I do with my phone. My data is backed up and I've rehearsed what I'd do in a phone killed/stolen desaster.
... now that would be interesting. Give, they'd probably kick the ball at 300km/h, unstoppable for mere mortals, scoring goals from every position and across the field.
But it would be a neat step forward in engineering none-the-less.
... like making me fly, giving me the body of a well-trained Ryan Gosling and making all good looking girls wanting to have sex with me I would consider buying it for that price.
Other than that: No.
Just got a Moto G5 Plus. Still a compromise. I wanted a 6"+ phablet with massive battery live, rugged case, stock android and uncastrated memory. Huawei Mate 9 and Xiaomi Mi Max came resonably close to those specs but I steered clear for various resons. The Moto G5 Plus but it's the best compromise. 32GB storage, 3GB RAM, good camera, near stock android. Common and as such cases and protective glas easyly available. 280 Euros. Close to the maximum I'm willing to spend on a smartphone. I would've stuck with my Moto G2, but it only has 8GB memory - which is a drag.
Given that, at the current rate, I replace my phone roughly every 3 years spending 1200€ would be a waste of money.
My 2 eurocents.
... transferred by radio it's not telepathy.
... those must have been when you could meet the woman of your dreams like that and be together until death thou part.
Nigh impossible with most ladies today.
I envy him.
Age of Planshopping and Flaking? Yes.
Golden? Wouldn't call it that.
Here's the deal: Social media and always on culture shorten attention spans to a minimum and cyberpunk culture disintegrates social ties we've had since the early age of man. Planshopping and bailing are a sideeffect of this. I dislike it a lot and try to sniff out and steer clear of people who indulge in this before wasting my time with them. Likewise I try my hardest to cherish the people who can treat me fair and with respect, keep an appointment and don't need to be fumbling on their smartphone every odd minute.
The way to deal with this is, of course, to slow electronic interaction to a more managable level. I get annoyed when I message with more than 3 people at a time and even that is too much. I only recieve something like 5 meaningful non-bot emails a week and write roughly 2 or 3. Which is exactly the amount I can handle and has been every since the mid-90ies when I started using e-mail.
I consider much of our allways-online social networking culture a mental illness epidemic and avoid it as much as I can. Treat me like a single-use friend and I will try my very best to avoid you like the plague and ignore you in the future. Although it really rubs me the wrong way to treat people like an asshole, even though they did it with me.
The per-item value of trinkets and doohikies is rapidly declining, as are the supposed values of some tacky, commercial online/web services and appy app-apps. Protonet just closed shop after being a big crown-funding darling child just 3 years ago. We're seeing the same with Rocket, errrm Rippoff Internet and countless other blowhard startup projects. Jawbone had their jawbone thingie but wanted to extend it beyond it as fast as possible and they failed. People don't seem to realise that it's mostly about big bets and very little substance.
The first jawbone device was a neat idea for the quantitive-self crowd and could've carried on as some special must-have device for the hippster sportive folks, they should've stuck with it and not inflated their brand so much so fast.
The most valuable thing today is peoples time and attention, as the most valuable thing in the cities today aren't cars but parking spaces. It will take some time and a few more crashes before the economy adapts. That's my suspicion anyway.