For instance, I have absolutely no ambitions to become a manager. If that ever happened, you would see the Peter Principle in action. My ambition is to be an excellent software developer - and I am. My growth is in areas related to software development. I work hard at getting better at software development every single day. I am also 50 years old and have never held a job where I had any kind of management responsibilities.
I feel the same way. The "sweet spot" job I've been doing is being a "technical lead". This simply means that I get to code everyday, manage couple of smart programmers, and make the important design/architecture/coding and even product design decisions. The title that comes with this sort of job depends on a company - in one place I was a "Technical Lead", in another "Chief Architect" - but the stuff I do was pretty much the same.
BTW, I'm also 50 and I wrote my first program in 1976.
If I screw up something in a file, I want to be able to kill the app in question (X it, ctrl+f4, or any other method), and click 'no' to any save dialogs, and not have to worry about the file being autosaved.
Nobody should stop you from using Emacs or vi if you really want.
But most who use computers do not want to worry about that. In fact the whole concept of "file" is bizarre to a non-geek. You should check out the books "About Face" or "The Humane Interface" which discuss such ideas in more depth.
In my first programming job (back in the Jurassic era) the CTO of the company was against getting video terminals for programmers. "This would reduce productivity", he said, "because they would just type code in without thinking. Writing things in pencil on coding sheets made you much better programmer". I left that company ASAP, as I preferred a user interface based on video terminals.:)
For instance, the "Save" button. He argues that a statement that says "Do you want to save your changes before you exit" is a hard sentence, and that "Do you want to throw away everything you just did" is a clearer sentence.
The word "save" isn't that hard of a word to grasp. People save money. People save possessions. Saving documents is no different. Grade schoolers understand it.
The problem with the "Save" button is that it exists at all. My desk does not have a save button, neither does my notebook. The "Save" button exposes the nastiness of computer architecture - that of multi-level storage.
That's too much for people trying to use computers to think about and it's something that's not at all relevant what they are trying to do. Imagine if you had to adjust the fuel-to-air mixture in your car each time you changed the RPM of the engine....
Corporations are run like small Stalinist empires (if you don't believe me try some "free speech" at your job). I don't think it's a good idea to have someone who is used to having nearly unlimited and unquestioned power.
The goverment is not a corporation.
Current occupant of the White House and his second in command were both CEOs at one time and look what happened.
They say that we are good for 122 years at current rate of consumption. However, AFAIK the consumption rate is going up. All those people in China want to have cars. If the growth is exponential we are going to have problems much sooner.
I will say though that the Linux experience on portables still stinks. I have a Toshiba Satellite that work gave me for some "testing." I have never actually booted it to Windows. When I first got it, I downloaded SuSe Enterprise 10 and tried to install. I got about 1/2 way through the install and it complained about a missing file (WTF? Nice ISO, guys... given it passed checksum). Tried again, no dice. So I left it for a couple months.
Pick a better portable. I had no problems with Linux running on IBM Thinkpads, Sonys and Fujitsu laptops. My current laptop is a Fujitsu Lifebook. I have Windows XP, Fedora Core 5 (recently updated from RH 8.0) and Ubuntu. I even have some room left for Minix. FC5 is my main O/S....
There's the problem: you newbies tried to build your own machine. Whoops! Did you purchase a copy of XP, or were you (much more likely) booting off of an older box's OEM XP CD?
Actually I did purchase a brand spanking new Windows XP. It was in the same order as the components of the machine.
Easy to compare hardware suport in XP (October 2001) with FC 4 (June 2005)...
I bought a copy of Windows XP at the same time as the machine. The whole order came from New Egg in December 2005. Windows XP came in a brand new shiny box.:-)
I've had Fedora Core installed on a Pentium 200Mhz machine. It had 92 meg of memory and old 4MB display card. I used the machine as a web and file server, although you could also run X on it. I had to replaced it when the motherboard died.
If "the people" had to install Windows from scratch, there would be no Windows. Last X-mas I built a machine with my son. It was an AMD based machine, with a new SATA drives. When we booted from the Windows XP install CD no hard drives were detected. After checking and double checking all the connections I booted from Fedora install CD.
Fedora had no problems detecting the hardware. So, after some googling we discovered that there were separate Windows drivers for the SATA drives that came with the motherboard. We had to create a floppy (!!!!) with the drivers that had to be inserted at a specific step during the windows install. Luckily my son insisted on getting a floppy drive, otherwise we would not be able to install windows.
In other words, your advice for him is "go broke and kill your dream of being a musician for a living"?
Well you have to build an audience. No one buys music from an unknown band. I would buy CDs at a live concert if I like the music, but never when surfing to some random web page. On the other hand, I'm always happy to listen to new music.
So, if you are willing to limit the size of your audience, go ahead and sell your MP3s.
Put your files on your website for free and set up a Paypal link for donations. If your fans like your music they will tip you. Forcing them to pay will only decrease your audience.
If the US government were to make it more difficult for companies to offshore, would the situation be any better?
If US provided universal health care insurance, for example, it would be one more reason to keep work in the US. The cost of health insurance is just one of the factors driving jobs offshore.
Much better way to help third world countries to develop would be to open our markets to their farm products. Now we have the insanity of USA grown corn being cheaper in Mexico than locally grow corn. Only because of US farm subsidies. As a result Mexicans farmers cannot make a living farming and instead have to get jobs at the local Nike factory.
I couldn't care LESS if the government is reading my emails, listening to my telephone calls, or keeping me under direct surveillance, aside from being annoyed that they're wasting their time. Yawn.
Hmmm.... what about those MP3 files on your computer... are they all legal? Or all those pictures of nude teens. Are you sure they are all over 18? Maybe the goverment needs to keep you locked up while they determine if you are or are not a "preditor". After all we need to "protect the children".
But yeah, al-q is real, and so were the London, India, USS Cole (sp?), etc. bombings - so not taking threats seriously - and personally - is pretty damned stupid.
Sure we should take is seriously. But you need to keep the risks in perspective. Since 9/11/2001 more Americans drowed in their bath tubs, than were killed by terrorists. Should we pass a law to ban bath tubs then?
A typical chord file contains something like "G D Em C" - which are all the chords you need to play for quite a lot of rock/pop songs (up to modulation to a different key). A lot of others are covered by "G D C" (even simpler). There are only 6 basic chords on the guitar (in a specific key). Most songs use only a few of those (except for people like e.g. David Bowie, who uses dozens of chords in some songs). Basically, to claim copyright violation here, is to claim that "G D C" is copyrighted. But by which of the 1,000,000 songs that use it? It isn't unique in any way (unlike, say, lyrics or mp3s). Chord files (usually) only contain names of chords, not rythym or anything else. They are brief and nonunique in the extreme. To claim copyright violation would be amusing if it weren't sad.
In fact chord progressions are not copyrightable. Just look at jazz - there are hundreds (if not thousands) tunes based on "I Got Rhythm" chord progression. Or for that matter consider the 12 bar blues or any doo-wap song from the 50s...
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I feel the same way. The "sweet spot" job I've been doing is being a "technical lead". This simply means that I get to code everyday, manage couple of smart programmers, and make the important design/architecture/coding and even product design decisions. The title that comes with this sort of job depends on a company - in one place I was a "Technical Lead", in another "Chief Architect" - but the stuff I do was pretty much the same.
BTW, I'm also 50 and I wrote my first program in 1976.
If I screw up something in a file, I want to be able to kill the app in question (X it, ctrl+f4, or any other method), and click 'no' to any save dialogs, and not have to worry about the file being autosaved.
Nobody should stop you from using Emacs or vi if you really want.
But most who use computers do not want to worry about that. In fact the whole concept of "file" is bizarre to a non-geek. You should check out the books "About Face" or "The Humane Interface" which discuss such ideas in more depth.
In my first programming job (back in the Jurassic era) the CTO of the company was against getting video terminals for programmers. "This would reduce productivity", he said, "because they would just type code in without thinking. Writing things in pencil on coding sheets made you much better programmer". I left that company ASAP, as I preferred a user interface based on video terminals. :)
The word "save" isn't that hard of a word to grasp. People save money. People save possessions. Saving documents is no different. Grade schoolers understand it.
The problem with the "Save" button is that it exists at all. My desk does not have a save button, neither does my notebook. The "Save" button exposes the nastiness of computer architecture - that of multi-level storage.
That's too much for people trying to use computers to think about and it's something that's not at all relevant what they are trying to do. Imagine if you had to adjust the fuel-to-air mixture in your car each time you changed the RPM of the engine....
It used to be called the Department of War. It was changed after WW II.
Some journalist read "I, Robot" or something....
Current occupant of the White House and his second in command were both CEOs at one time and look what happened.
You share files with USB memory sticks. They are much larger than floppies. For diagnostics Knoppix is your friend.
ROTFL ;-)
He thought having a floppy would count for more geek points. The machine also has a transparent case with Chernobyl Blue lights... ;-)
Pick a better portable. I had no problems with Linux running on IBM Thinkpads, Sonys and Fujitsu laptops. My current laptop is a Fujitsu Lifebook. I have Windows XP, Fedora Core 5 (recently updated from RH 8.0) and Ubuntu. I even have some room left for Minix. FC5 is my main O/S....
Actually I did purchase a brand spanking new Windows XP. It was in the same order as the components of the machine.
Actually AMD works great. Thanks for the advice.
Except that I bought the Windows XP together with the machine parts....
I had just built the machine. My first thought was that I had connected something wrong. But, hey I'm just a retard....
I bought a copy of Windows XP at the same time as the machine. The whole order came from New Egg in December 2005. Windows XP came in a brand new shiny box. :-)
Fedora had no problems detecting the hardware. So, after some googling we discovered that there were separate Windows drivers for the SATA drives that came with the motherboard. We had to create a floppy (!!!!) with the drivers that had to be inserted at a specific step during the windows install. Luckily my son insisted on getting a floppy drive, otherwise we would not be able to install windows.
Fedora Core 4 installed with no problems..
Well you have to build an audience. No one buys music from an unknown band. I would buy CDs at a live concert if I like the music, but never when surfing to some random web page. On the other hand, I'm always happy to listen to new music.
So, if you are willing to limit the size of your audience, go ahead and sell your MP3s.
What's wrong with Sounclick?
If US provided universal health care insurance, for example, it would be one more reason to keep work in the US. The cost of health insurance is just one of the factors driving jobs offshore.
See here for example.
Hmmm.... what about those MP3 files on your computer... are they all legal? Or all those pictures of nude teens. Are you sure they are all over 18? Maybe the goverment needs to keep you locked up while they determine if you are or are not a "preditor". After all we need to "protect the children".
Sure we should take is seriously. But you need to keep the risks in perspective. Since 9/11/2001 more Americans drowed in their bath tubs, than were killed by terrorists. Should we pass a law to ban bath tubs then?
In fact chord progressions are not copyrightable. Just look at jazz - there are hundreds (if not thousands) tunes based on "I Got Rhythm" chord progression. Or for that matter consider the 12 bar blues or any doo-wap song from the 50s...