I agree. I am the lead developer at my company where we too have our own application which includes the famous cart
All I can say is, DUH! The only thing our form lets you change is the quantity of product, and of course the handy delete button. The items in the cart are referenced by their rowid, because they are stored in our database, with their prices fixed. Adding items to the cart is done by part number only, and all other info is taken from the catalog database at that point. Of course we take precautions to validate that the rows you're modifying also belong to YOUR cart, and not someone else's.
Anybody who puts the prices in as part of any form does not deserve to be programming secure applications. This is a mistake which is in my view unforgivable and I would immediately discipline my staff if I ever caught something as stupid as this in our code.
Thanks for the wonderful info - I really, really appreciate it. I had no idea that it was already being worked on, and that was where my frustration came from (and I couldn't find anything on the PostgreSQL site, so I guess I assumed the worst).
Once it finishes beta testing, then I can probably consider Postgres for my projects again! Since the outer join issue was the only one that I personally encountered (I had no complaints about performance, and I hadn't encountered the bugs mentioned), I'm sure that I'll be quite thrilled with 7.1
Heck - I love 7.0 even. It was just a bit of a disappointment to discover that I couldn't do a straight port of my application at work because of this:)
Previously, a staple of the Star Trek series' gaining interest was always new species, in particular, new enemies that are somehow different from anything we've seen before. Also, there'd be "innovative new technology" always coming out.
Does this mean we're going back to Klingons and Romulans? Does this series mean that we'll be stuck with 22nd century tech? It's not like they can invent new stuff, because if they do, then that'd be stuff we should have seen in the 3 24th century shows, right?
Oh well. In any case, I used to be a huge Star Trek fan but the past couple of years have made me stop watching and I've since lost interest. To be this seems to be sort of a step back. I don't see how you can be creative with this show when so much of the ground's already been covered.
I love PostgreSQL. It's fantastic, and serves my needs reasonably well, except for one thing that really bugs the hell out of me...
Support for outer (left) joins. I mean, I want to be able to do a
SELECT table1.x, table2.z FROM table1, outer table2 WHERE table1.y = table2.y
or,
SELECT table1.x, table2.z FROM table1 LEFT JOIN table2 ON table1.y = table2.y
rather than having to resort to something stupid like this:
SELECT table1.x, table2.z FROM table1, table2 where table1.y = table2.y UNION SELECT table1.x, NULL as z FROM table1 WHERE table1.z NOT IN (SELECT z FROM table2)
I mean, come on. PostgreSQL is fantastic because it supports transactions and triggers and just about every other feature that I REALLY want, but it lacks something like outer joins, which makes it difficult for me to work with.
At the present time, my company's using Informix for some stuff, MS-SQL for others. Porting my app to be able to work with PostgreSQL would require some of the above to work.
Google is your friend. A simple search of "electronic signature capture" pulls out about half a dozen candidates on the first two screens alone, including Topaz Systems and IEPOS. I'd suggest you start with these, look at more of the results, and maybe refine your google search to something more specific.
Since you're looking for a specific piece of hardware, it shouldn't be too hard to find it.
Just thought I'd warn ya, if it's a really old case it may not be legal to bury it. I hear that old computer components used to be full of lead, which in many places is illegal to dispose of in just any manner.
As for having fun with the tool, I envy you:) It sounds like it could have been lots of fun!
Ceramic blades are certainly one possibility. I'm not sure about their lifespan, but it sounds like an idea for sure.
Another idea might be a "diamond wheel". It's almost like a saw, except instead of a blade along the wheel it's studded with tiny diamonds - these are commonly used for slicing through granite. Perhaps you might be able to use something like this. I'm pretty sure it won't wear out on you.
I was wondering if maybe it'd be possible to use some HCL (Hyrochloric) or H2SO4 (Sulfuric) acid in a precise manner to eat through the plastic exactly where you want it. Naturally this will come with some serious safety concerns, but it should be possible to accomplish what you're looking for. The trick will be using the right amount in the right spots.
Of course, this might not be as time-efficient as a cutting method, but it might do the trick.
I run a production (24/7) server at work as well, which runs an app which we have been offering to our customers and are constantly improving (adding features, maintenance, customization etc).
Naturally, we have our down-time late at night or on weekends, when it's not as likely that there's anyone using it. Firstly, keep your data on a separate drive from your applications and system. Now, we make daily backups of all of our data.
As for your system, every time you do an upgrade or new install, make a disaster-recovery image of the apps/system drive or partition. Get a good piece of software (commercial if you must - even Ghost or DriveImage will do) to image the whole thing into a safe location. This can happen either to a network drive on another server, a tape, or another drive on the same system. In our case, we have a server dedicated to storing various images for our machines.
Just 3 weeks ago we had an upgrade destroy our system (render it unbootable). This happened at 2am while upgrading RAID device drivers. It took about 30 minutes to restore the system from our disaster recovery image, and then of course we analyzed what went wrong and completed the upgrade over the next hour, then tested, and created a new disaster recovery image with the updated configuration.
If you run a production system, you can't afford to not have a disaster recovery image that you could restore in a matter of minutes - naturally you can't afford to re-install everything. Also, keeping your data on another drive keeps it safe from whatever you're doing to the apps.
Oh yes - and DO test your disaster recovery procedures before you need it.
what colour schemes? When coding, I found it to be less a problem about specific fonts than I did about the brightness of what I was looking at.
A black shell (heck - even DOS) with white characters has always been easier on my eyes than a bright GUI interface (like the Windows default) with black characters. I'm unsure why, because I have a hell of a time reading the black-background web pages out there like Segfault or Planetquake to name a couple, but for some reason the old 80x25 black and white has always been easy on my eyes. Funny thing about the web sites, though - I have the problem on IE much more than on Netscape, but it's still there on both browsers. I end up highlighting all the text on the page just so I can read it.
If you're sticking with the windowed environments with more font choices, I'd have to say that I've always liked to work with Arial Black. It's not as harsh to focus on like the Courier or Times New Roman fonts that seem to be default just about everywhere. The characters are thicker and nicely rounded, and look good to me in many different resolutions.
I performed a quick search on Freshmeat for you. Here's the results (filtered for stuff that's actually relevant, I think). In no particular order:
CYCAS - not sure if it's open-source, but will run on Linux and BSD and looks pretty powerful
Jcad - written in Java, this is an open-sourced CAD which works with DXF file formats. Not the most powerful of tools out there, but it's a start
iCADis - can't tell much from the site, but it might be worth a try. Uses GTK and is covered by the GPL
OCTree - looks like it has a really innovative interface. Not sure about the license though.
Varicad - for mechanical engineering. Looks good, but unsure if it's open.
QCad - seems to be one of the better ones, and it's open.
That's all I can find. You can judge yourself if you need it to be 100% open-source, if you need it to be free, and if you need it to run on a particular platform. Perhaps you might settle on a combination of these, since it doesn't look likely that you'll find something that meets all 3 conditions (assuming you were looking for it).
If you're a programmer, then by all means help out with one of the open-source projects out of the ones mentioned above. Lots of them could use things like improved rendering (speed, effects etc), and the ability to load lots of different file formats.
Unfortunately, it looks like BOTH the Pluto and the X-33/34 missions have been canceled. I guess NASA doesn't have enough money for either of them. I wish they could have made at least one of these two work - I'm much more interested in this stuff than the ISS.
According to the wonderful Segfault satire, Wearable PC maker calls it quits, the company executive discovers the real reason why the business won't work:
"I finally figured out why we haven't sold any of these things. No one is a big enough
dork to actually wear a PC."
On the one hand, I agree with your post in that I think it's ridiculous to try to limit the potential of the internet, and free speech and all that.
On the other, though, is the fact that this is a product that they sell, and naturally they want to protect that position. I'll probably get lynched as a troll for saying this, but I've made two observations:
1 - the argument in the past has been to say "What if I'm downloading legal music that's not mainstream, and thus not owned by the RIAA"? The answer to this question is that this filtering shouldn't affect the "legal" music, so it's a non-issue.
2 - "what if I own the music I'm downloading, since I bought the CD"? Well - if you've got the CD, I guess you can either rip the tracks yourself, or use the my.mp3.com service. If you've already got it, why do you need to download it?
Let's be realistic here - yes, music is overpriced, and I feel that we do have the right to have the music in any form we wish once we've purchased it, but the recording industry is trying to protect themselves too.
Taking this further, we don't have the "right" to buy a piece of software (say, a copy of Quake3), snapshot the ISO and distribute it. We don't have the right to go and download that snapshot if we haven't bought it. Nor do we need it if we have bought it. Id Software earned their right to sell it (at whatever price they want). If you feel it's overpriced, then DON'T BUY IT! Feeling that something is overpriced does not give you the right to steal. This applies to music too. If enough people stood up and refused to buy, then they'd be forced to respond to the market.
If you already have it, then you don't need another copy either. Obviously we haven't been doing a good job of telling the RIAA that their music isn't worth the price, judging by the fact that sales were up last year.
Simply put, ask for a deposit, plus hook in the date of delivery to be legally binding for both parties.
This way, if you don't get moving at all, then you have the deposit and you can keep it, even it the project never gets going. If the project is nearly finished, then you've got the deposit and you don't have to deliver any finished code until you receive the rest.
I guess this gets you about half-way, but I think it's a decent compromise. If you have the feeling that this sort of thing will happen, then do it.
Alternatively, get your own designers, and have them work together with you as part of one larger org. That way you have more control over the process.
I originally thought of the X10 camera when I read this post. I bought one a few months ago, and I love it. It's a fantastic little device and it has a pretty decent range (approx 100'). Unfortunately, 100 feet is a far cry from 5 miles to the support vehicle, so there's still the problem of how to upload the images to the base station. Obviously there's no point in using the wireless camera if you have to carry the base station with you too. So while the camera's good, we still need to figure out where to keep the base station in order for this to be useful. Otherwise, I'd suggest to get one of those USB devices and plug it into a handheld with a cell modem.
Not to blame Linux (because I'm a huge fan and user), but from the sounds of this article HP is probably likely to use PalmOS.
From HP's perspective, they'll have to choose between making something essentially from scratch from Linux themselves (since there's a lack of GUI and apps that scale down to the handheld level currently), or choose PalmOS which they won't have to support and has a huge app base right now.
It's going to be a tough decision for them. They'll probably be more inclined to outsource the support to Palm, but I do hope they choose Linux and support it.
Perhaps it is by headhunters (I've seen so), but in my company I see ALL resumes that are submitted for my job-posting that meet the core requirements. Relevant means that if I ask for Java in the job posting, there should be Java on the resume somewhere. If it's not there, it goes back to HR (or, actually, it never makes it into my hands). We don't process anything by computer - we read them all, one way or the other.
I appreciate your response, and I'd like to follow up by giving my explanation for some of the points you've made (very good ones, I might add).
[Some hiring managers have resistance to hiring someone without a certain level of higher education for high level positions - so make sure to list it accurately and where they will find it.]
Agreed. I was only indicating my thoughts on the subject, since I was the one hiring in this case. You're right though - do list it, but don't expect that it alone will get you the job.
["Buzzword bingo helps" get the job, especially if there is a human resources professional involved who doesn't specialize in the technology but can see that applicant X has 15 buzzwords that apllicant Y does not.]
My experience has been that it's a myth when I've been job hunting. Nowadays, being the person hiring, I ask lots of questions about the buzzwords indicated on the resume. More importantly, I interview people who have the CORE knowledge and experience that I'm looking for, and I check the minor stuff during the interview. I'd rather have a candidate surprise me with extra knowledge during the interview than disappoint me by demonstrating a lack of knowledge in an area they listed on their resume.
[Same as above. They might have said Java, but they have some VB apps around, and your VB knowledge might give you an advantage over the next equally good Java developer who knows only Java.]
Same as above for me too, except that one person having VB on their resume won't increase their chances of getting an interview with me. I check the Java (in this example) and the Java only. I'll ask about VB in the interview, and then and only then will it make a difference to me. Not on the resume. I want the resume to just cover what I've asked for in the job posting, plus perhaps a little bit extra (but don't bury the core competencies I've asked for in it!)
[This will work for lower level positions, but to get in at a high level you need the right attitude, lots of knowledge and experience, proven value in the specific technologies the company needs, and breadth of knowledge of related areas.]
Right attitude is the key. Knowledge is essential for the job, of course, but your attitude will make and break both you and your team. I think that attitude is even more important in the higher positions because you become both a role model, and you have the power to raise or break the self-esteem of the individuals who may be below you through either praise or constant complaining about their jobs. The good people don't have to know all the answers, but they do need to know either how to find them or how to find people who can answer those questions.
Get a few units working 100%. Using those units, test the components of all the other units in assembly-line fashion (first test all the hard drives in the working units at once, then the power sources etc). Doing it this way will save you from having to debug each individually and will let you add parts to the "good" and "Bad" piles much more efficiently, by using the same procedure for all of them at the same time. You will get into a rhythm which will speed things up this way.
As someone who has just gone through the process of hiring a developer to help out on our team, I think I can give you a few hints as to what got the candidates to the interview. So here's my top 10 list:
1 - didn't care about education. Looked at it, but it wasn't a requirement for me, so I completely ignored whether the candidate had a degree/diploma or not
2 - don't list everything. DO NOT make that mistake. Customize your resume for the job you're applying for. If the job posting asks for Java, write lots about Java and don't go overboard mentioning the other 15 languages you know. Otherwise the person looking at your resume might have trouble finding the word "Java" amongst the rest of it. Don't care if you're an MCSD or a Perl Guru. You can mention it, but don't take up a lot of room with that stuff.
3 - if you're going to list certifications, be precise. I've seen resumes that said "Java certification", but didn't mention which particular one, or even whose certification it was. It could have been Sun's program or Joe's Java Palace, as far as I could tell.
4 - do not list every single trivial API and technology you know. Too many resumes throw out every acronym out there (as we've seen in marketing) in an attempt to catch my eye on the ones I want the candidate to know. Generally, either the person's talking out of their ass (and they don't really know all of this stuff), or they've dabbled a bit in all of them but haven't mastered any. Not good. I can't tell you how many resumes I've seen that had lines reading like: "ASP, JSP, XML, DTD, ADO, COM, JDBC,..." and it goes on and on. Meanwhile I can't find what I'm looking for in there because I'm blinded by the acronyms.
5 - I know I said this before, but CUSTOMIZE your resume for the particular position you're applying for! I don't care about every OS and word processor you know how to use...
6 - list experience and list it well. Focus on the times you've used the technology that you're being hired to work with. If I'm hiring you for Java, I don't want every detail about your Visual Basic experiences.
7 - do not list every technology you have a passing knowledge of. Show only the stuff you know really well. The rest can come out in the interview. If I read a resume, I assume that the person knows what they're talking about. For example, if you mention JDBC in the resume, I don't want to hear in the interview that you're not all that comfortable with databases (or worse, I catch a mistake in the answer to a question I asked because they were trying to cover up the fact that they really didn't know this stuff), or that you haven't a clue what a transaction is.
8 - do indeed shorten it and format it nicely. Too many resumes I've received have been ugly and hard to read, and that only agitates me. I try to have patience, but sometimes it's a bit frustrating.
9 - following that, I know this one's offtopic completely, but proofread once, twice, three times and THEN have someone else proof it too. One mistake (grammar or spelling) I might overlook, but two and the resume goes back to HR. I hire programmers who pay attention to detail and take the time to do things right.
10 - did I mention customize your resume for the position? Good. Do it. No more than 2 pages.
Once at the interview, I ask questions about the contents of the resume. If the candidate made it to the interview and they hold up to the questions, then the only thing I check after is their attitude. Lots of energy and enthusiasm wins, even if that candidate has a little less knowledge/experience than another person. A willingness to learn and grow is also a big plus. I also ask about other technologies not on the resume, but they're more out of curiosity and I don't give the answers the weight I give what I just mentioned above.
Slashdot Mirror
a robot that lays fiber-optic lines in city sewers, is that the right term for running fiber-optic cable?
Not on a first date. Unless the robot's a real machine (wink}
Now when the ground's shaking, you won't be automatically thinking that it's the subway.
I agree. I am the lead developer at my company where we too have our own application which includes the famous cart
All I can say is, DUH! The only thing our form lets you change is the quantity of product, and of course the handy delete button. The items in the cart are referenced by their rowid, because they are stored in our database, with their prices fixed. Adding items to the cart is done by part number only, and all other info is taken from the catalog database at that point. Of course we take precautions to validate that the rows you're modifying also belong to YOUR cart, and not someone else's.
Anybody who puts the prices in as part of any form does not deserve to be programming secure applications. This is a mistake which is in my view unforgivable and I would immediately discipline my staff if I ever caught something as stupid as this in our code.
Thanks for the wonderful info - I really, really appreciate it. I had no idea that it was already being worked on, and that was where my frustration came from (and I couldn't find anything on the PostgreSQL site, so I guess I assumed the worst).
:)
Once it finishes beta testing, then I can probably consider Postgres for my projects again! Since the outer join issue was the only one that I personally encountered (I had no complaints about performance, and I hadn't encountered the bugs mentioned), I'm sure that I'll be quite thrilled with 7.1
Heck - I love 7.0 even. It was just a bit of a disappointment to discover that I couldn't do a straight port of my application at work because of this
Once again - thanks!
Previously, a staple of the Star Trek series' gaining interest was always new species, in particular, new enemies that are somehow different from anything we've seen before. Also, there'd be "innovative new technology" always coming out.
Does this mean we're going back to Klingons and Romulans? Does this series mean that we'll be stuck with 22nd century tech? It's not like they can invent new stuff, because if they do, then that'd be stuff we should have seen in the 3 24th century shows, right?
Oh well. In any case, I used to be a huge Star Trek fan but the past couple of years have made me stop watching and I've since lost interest. To be this seems to be sort of a step back. I don't see how you can be creative with this show when so much of the ground's already been covered.
I love PostgreSQL. It's fantastic, and serves my needs reasonably well, except for one thing that really bugs the hell out of me...
Support for outer (left) joins. I mean, I want to be able to do a
SELECT table1.x, table2.z FROM table1, outer table2 WHERE table1.y = table2.y
or,
SELECT table1.x, table2.z FROM table1 LEFT JOIN table2 ON table1.y = table2.y
rather than having to resort to something stupid like this:
SELECT table1.x, table2.z FROM table1, table2 where table1.y = table2.y
UNION
SELECT table1.x, NULL as z FROM table1 WHERE table1.z NOT IN (SELECT z FROM table2)
I mean, come on. PostgreSQL is fantastic because it supports transactions and triggers and just about every other feature that I REALLY want, but it lacks something like outer joins, which makes it difficult for me to work with.
At the present time, my company's using Informix for some stuff, MS-SQL for others. Porting my app to be able to work with PostgreSQL would require some of the above to work.
Google is your friend. A simple search of "electronic signature capture" pulls out about half a dozen candidates on the first two screens alone, including Topaz Systems and IEPOS. I'd suggest you start with these, look at more of the results, and maybe refine your google search to something more specific.
Since you're looking for a specific piece of hardware, it shouldn't be too hard to find it.
Just thought I'd warn ya, if it's a really old case it may not be legal to bury it. I hear that old computer components used to be full of lead, which in many places is illegal to dispose of in just any manner.
:) It sounds like it could have been lots of fun!
As for having fun with the tool, I envy you
Ceramic blades are certainly one possibility. I'm not sure about their lifespan, but it sounds like an idea for sure.
Another idea might be a "diamond wheel". It's almost like a saw, except instead of a blade along the wheel it's studded with tiny diamonds - these are commonly used for slicing through granite. Perhaps you might be able to use something like this. I'm pretty sure it won't wear out on you.
I was wondering if maybe it'd be possible to use some HCL (Hyrochloric) or H2SO4 (Sulfuric) acid in a precise manner to eat through the plastic exactly where you want it. Naturally this will come with some serious safety concerns, but it should be possible to accomplish what you're looking for. The trick will be using the right amount in the right spots.
Of course, this might not be as time-efficient as a cutting method, but it might do the trick.
I run a production (24/7) server at work as well, which runs an app which we have been offering to our customers and are constantly improving (adding features, maintenance, customization etc).
Naturally, we have our down-time late at night or on weekends, when it's not as likely that there's anyone using it. Firstly, keep your data on a separate drive from your applications and system. Now, we make daily backups of all of our data.
As for your system, every time you do an upgrade or new install, make a disaster-recovery image of the apps/system drive or partition. Get a good piece of software (commercial if you must - even Ghost or DriveImage will do) to image the whole thing into a safe location. This can happen either to a network drive on another server, a tape, or another drive on the same system. In our case, we have a server dedicated to storing various images for our machines.
Just 3 weeks ago we had an upgrade destroy our system (render it unbootable). This happened at 2am while upgrading RAID device drivers. It took about 30 minutes to restore the system from our disaster recovery image, and then of course we analyzed what went wrong and completed the upgrade over the next hour, then tested, and created a new disaster recovery image with the updated configuration.
If you run a production system, you can't afford to not have a disaster recovery image that you could restore in a matter of minutes - naturally you can't afford to re-install everything. Also, keeping your data on another drive keeps it safe from whatever you're doing to the apps.
Oh yes - and DO test your disaster recovery procedures before you need it.
what colour schemes? When coding, I found it to be less a problem about specific fonts than I did about the brightness of what I was looking at.
A black shell (heck - even DOS) with white characters has always been easier on my eyes than a bright GUI interface (like the Windows default) with black characters. I'm unsure why, because I have a hell of a time reading the black-background web pages out there like Segfault or Planetquake to name a couple, but for some reason the old 80x25 black and white has always been easy on my eyes. Funny thing about the web sites, though - I have the problem on IE much more than on Netscape, but it's still there on both browsers. I end up highlighting all the text on the page just so I can read it.
If you're sticking with the windowed environments with more font choices, I'd have to say that I've always liked to work with Arial Black. It's not as harsh to focus on like the Courier or Times New Roman fonts that seem to be default just about everywhere. The characters are thicker and nicely rounded, and look good to me in many different resolutions.
I performed a quick search on Freshmeat for you. Here's the results (filtered for stuff that's actually relevant, I think). In no particular order:
CYCAS - not sure if it's open-source, but will run on Linux and BSD and looks pretty powerful
Jcad - written in Java, this is an open-sourced CAD which works with DXF file formats. Not the most powerful of tools out there, but it's a start
iCADis - can't tell much from the site, but it might be worth a try. Uses GTK and is covered by the GPL
OCTree - looks like it has a really innovative interface. Not sure about the license though.
Varicad - for mechanical engineering. Looks good, but unsure if it's open.
QCad - seems to be one of the better ones, and it's open.
That's all I can find. You can judge yourself if you need it to be 100% open-source, if you need it to be free, and if you need it to run on a particular platform. Perhaps you might settle on a combination of these, since it doesn't look likely that you'll find something that meets all 3 conditions (assuming you were looking for it).
If you're a programmer, then by all means help out with one of the open-source projects out of the ones mentioned above. Lots of them could use things like improved rendering (speed, effects etc), and the ability to load lots of different file formats.
Unfortunately, it looks like BOTH the Pluto and the X-33/34 missions have been canceled. I guess NASA doesn't have enough money for either of them. I wish they could have made at least one of these two work - I'm much more interested in this stuff than the ISS.
Maybe Pepsi or Coke would pay for the whole mission in exchange for having their logo painted on the rocket at launch time?
:)
I would think that Disney should have first dibs on this particular mission
According to the wonderful Segfault satire, Wearable PC maker calls it quits, the company executive discovers the real reason why the business won't work:
"I finally figured out why we haven't sold any of these things. No one is a big enough dork to actually wear a PC."
On the one hand, I agree with your post in that I think it's ridiculous to try to limit the potential of the internet, and free speech and all that.
On the other, though, is the fact that this is a product that they sell, and naturally they want to protect that position. I'll probably get lynched as a troll for saying this, but I've made two observations:
1 - the argument in the past has been to say "What if I'm downloading legal music that's not mainstream, and thus not owned by the RIAA"? The answer to this question is that this filtering shouldn't affect the "legal" music, so it's a non-issue.
2 - "what if I own the music I'm downloading, since I bought the CD"? Well - if you've got the CD, I guess you can either rip the tracks yourself, or use the my.mp3.com service. If you've already got it, why do you need to download it?
Let's be realistic here - yes, music is overpriced, and I feel that we do have the right to have the music in any form we wish once we've purchased it, but the recording industry is trying to protect themselves too.
Taking this further, we don't have the "right" to buy a piece of software (say, a copy of Quake3), snapshot the ISO and distribute it. We don't have the right to go and download that snapshot if we haven't bought it. Nor do we need it if we have bought it. Id Software earned their right to sell it (at whatever price they want). If you feel it's overpriced, then DON'T BUY IT! Feeling that something is overpriced does not give you the right to steal. This applies to music too. If enough people stood up and refused to buy, then they'd be forced to respond to the market.
If you already have it, then you don't need another copy either. Obviously we haven't been doing a good job of telling the RIAA that their music isn't worth the price, judging by the fact that sales were up last year.
Simply put, ask for a deposit, plus hook in the date of delivery to be legally binding for both parties.
This way, if you don't get moving at all, then you have the deposit and you can keep it, even it the project never gets going. If the project is nearly finished, then you've got the deposit and you don't have to deliver any finished code until you receive the rest.
I guess this gets you about half-way, but I think it's a decent compromise. If you have the feeling that this sort of thing will happen, then do it.
Alternatively, get your own designers, and have them work together with you as part of one larger org. That way you have more control over the process.
I originally thought of the X10 camera when I read this post. I bought one a few months ago, and I love it. It's a fantastic little device and it has a pretty decent range (approx 100'). Unfortunately, 100 feet is a far cry from 5 miles to the support vehicle, so there's still the problem of how to upload the images to the base station. Obviously there's no point in using the wireless camera if you have to carry the base station with you too. So while the camera's good, we still need to figure out where to keep the base station in order for this to be useful. Otherwise, I'd suggest to get one of those USB devices and plug it into a handheld with a cell modem.
Not to blame Linux (because I'm a huge fan and user), but from the sounds of this article HP is probably likely to use PalmOS.
From HP's perspective, they'll have to choose between making something essentially from scratch from Linux themselves (since there's a lack of GUI and apps that scale down to the handheld level currently), or choose PalmOS which they won't have to support and has a huge app base right now.
It's going to be a tough decision for them. They'll probably be more inclined to outsource the support to Palm, but I do hope they choose Linux and support it.
That reminds me of the old joke:
Windows CE +
Windows ME +
Windows NT =
Windows CeMeNT, which will be their latest in integration of the 3.
Mind you, if they did ship a Linux version... well, I'd have my Mastercard out so fast Einstein would be spinning in his grave.
Why? Did you take his?
Perhaps it is by headhunters (I've seen so), but in my company I see ALL resumes that are submitted for my job-posting that meet the core requirements. Relevant means that if I ask for Java in the job posting, there should be Java on the resume somewhere. If it's not there, it goes back to HR (or, actually, it never makes it into my hands). We don't process anything by computer - we read them all, one way or the other.
I appreciate your response, and I'd like to follow up by giving my explanation for some of the points you've made (very good ones, I might add).
[Some hiring managers have resistance to hiring someone without a certain level of higher education for high level positions - so make sure to list it accurately and where they will find it.]
Agreed. I was only indicating my thoughts on the subject, since I was the one hiring in this case. You're right though - do list it, but don't expect that it alone will get you the job.
["Buzzword bingo helps" get the job, especially if there is a human resources professional involved who doesn't specialize in the technology but can see that applicant X has 15 buzzwords that apllicant Y does not.]
My experience has been that it's a myth when I've been job hunting. Nowadays, being the person hiring, I ask lots of questions about the buzzwords indicated on the resume. More importantly, I interview people who have the CORE knowledge and experience that I'm looking for, and I check the minor stuff during the interview. I'd rather have a candidate surprise me with extra knowledge during the interview than disappoint me by demonstrating a lack of knowledge in an area they listed on their resume.
[Same as above. They might have said Java, but they have some VB apps around, and your VB knowledge might give you an advantage over the next equally good Java developer who knows only Java.]
Same as above for me too, except that one person having VB on their resume won't increase their chances of getting an interview with me. I check the Java (in this example) and the Java only. I'll ask about VB in the interview, and then and only then will it make a difference to me. Not on the resume. I want the resume to just cover what I've asked for in the job posting, plus perhaps a little bit extra (but don't bury the core competencies I've asked for in it!)
[This will work for lower level positions, but to get in at a high level you need the right attitude, lots of knowledge and experience, proven value in the specific technologies the company needs, and breadth of knowledge of related areas.]
Right attitude is the key. Knowledge is essential for the job, of course, but your attitude will make and break both you and your team. I think that attitude is even more important in the higher positions because you become both a role model, and you have the power to raise or break the self-esteem of the individuals who may be below you through either praise or constant complaining about their jobs. The good people don't have to know all the answers, but they do need to know either how to find them or how to find people who can answer those questions.
Good points - I appreciate your feedback!
Get a few units working 100%. Using those units, test the components of all the other units in assembly-line fashion (first test all the hard drives in the working units at once, then the power sources etc). Doing it this way will save you from having to debug each individually and will let you add parts to the "good" and "Bad" piles much more efficiently, by using the same procedure for all of them at the same time. You will get into a rhythm which will speed things up this way.
As someone who has just gone through the process of hiring a developer to help out on our team, I think I can give you a few hints as to what got the candidates to the interview. So here's my top 10 list:
..." and it goes on and on. Meanwhile I can't find what I'm looking for in there because I'm blinded by the acronyms.
1 - didn't care about education. Looked at it, but it wasn't a requirement for me, so I completely ignored whether the candidate had a degree/diploma or not
2 - don't list everything. DO NOT make that mistake. Customize your resume for the job you're applying for. If the job posting asks for Java, write lots about Java and don't go overboard mentioning the other 15 languages you know. Otherwise the person looking at your resume might have trouble finding the word "Java" amongst the rest of it. Don't care if you're an MCSD or a Perl Guru. You can mention it, but don't take up a lot of room with that stuff.
3 - if you're going to list certifications, be precise. I've seen resumes that said "Java certification", but didn't mention which particular one, or even whose certification it was. It could have been Sun's program or Joe's Java Palace, as far as I could tell.
4 - do not list every single trivial API and technology you know. Too many resumes throw out every acronym out there (as we've seen in marketing) in an attempt to catch my eye on the ones I want the candidate to know. Generally, either the person's talking out of their ass (and they don't really know all of this stuff), or they've dabbled a bit in all of them but haven't mastered any. Not good. I can't tell you how many resumes I've seen that had lines reading like: "ASP, JSP, XML, DTD, ADO, COM, JDBC,
5 - I know I said this before, but CUSTOMIZE your resume for the particular position you're applying for! I don't care about every OS and word processor you know how to use...
6 - list experience and list it well. Focus on the times you've used the technology that you're being hired to work with. If I'm hiring you for Java, I don't want every detail about your Visual Basic experiences.
7 - do not list every technology you have a passing knowledge of. Show only the stuff you know really well. The rest can come out in the interview. If I read a resume, I assume that the person knows what they're talking about. For example, if you mention JDBC in the resume, I don't want to hear in the interview that you're not all that comfortable with databases (or worse, I catch a mistake in the answer to a question I asked because they were trying to cover up the fact that they really didn't know this stuff), or that you haven't a clue what a transaction is.
8 - do indeed shorten it and format it nicely. Too many resumes I've received have been ugly and hard to read, and that only agitates me. I try to have patience, but sometimes it's a bit frustrating.
9 - following that, I know this one's offtopic completely, but proofread once, twice, three times and THEN have someone else proof it too. One mistake (grammar or spelling) I might overlook, but two and the resume goes back to HR. I hire programmers who pay attention to detail and take the time to do things right.
10 - did I mention customize your resume for the position? Good. Do it. No more than 2 pages.
Once at the interview, I ask questions about the contents of the resume. If the candidate made it to the interview and they hold up to the questions, then the only thing I check after is their attitude. Lots of energy and enthusiasm wins, even if that candidate has a little less knowledge/experience than another person. A willingness to learn and grow is also a big plus. I also ask about other technologies not on the resume, but they're more out of curiosity and I don't give the answers the weight I give what I just mentioned above.
I wish you the best of luck! Happy hunting!