I always seem to end up overcommitting myself to volunteer projects, simply because I, well, volunteer...
Of course the opportunity to overcommit yourself really takes off when you have kids:-)
I see a lot of opportunities to get involved with projects in developing web 'stuff' for them nowadays, which is really great because you can:
Do it with free software
Do it from 'wherever'
Collaborate with people who know their stuff
Do it anytime
Use the whole internet as examples
The great thing about volunteering to do stuff is that everybody is too busy being grateful for them to be too worried about whether you have 'the right qualifications' and stuff. It doesn't matter how bad a job you do, nobody wants you to leave, regardless, and eventually you get better:-)
There are always interesting community projects going on. Go to you local government (council, shire, whatever) office and find some. Lot's of small museums or educational places are underfunded and run on three parts love, one part sweat and one part community funding. Places like this can always handle an extra pair of hands and if you have a proposal they will listen.
Only a really 'commercial' volunteer organisation will turn down help.
And it works, sort of. It works well for me, and it works quite well for my more computer capable clients, but some other clients:
Forget the URL
Forget their password
Just can't use it
Dialling the Web gets in their way
Not that those problems are really majors, but they get in the way, and so they don't always submit their problems.
What I need to do is let people e-mail their problems into it, and exactly how to achieve this is churning away in the back of my mind at the moment.
I've also done a WAP gateway on it so that I (and others, because the whole company uses my system now) can enter timesheets and lookup jobs and such with a WAP phone.
If you're interested in the code I'm sure we can dig something out. It uses Apache / PHP / PostgreSQL and handles through to the billing stage.
Does anyone know when Debian packages will be released for this?
The Helix Code web site seems to think that Debian (and Corel, Storm,...) don't exist! Which is kind of a shame, because all of the stuff to distribute a suite of packages such as the ones on the website is all very nicely handled by Debian. After all, I can point to kde.tdyc.org (for example) to get a suite of Debian packages for KDE.
I noticed on the PostgreSQL Hackers list that Thomas Lane said this was very bogus because it appears to re-include his libjpeg as many times as it is used by something else.
There's been some mention of a new KDE browser effort in the press recently. This is great, as the browser is such an integrated component of KDE and yet the current one doesn't support (e.g.) authentication.
Was there any consideration given to using Gecko as the rendering engine for this?
I'm using mozilla (M11) to post this, and the rendering engine seems pretty much all there now, in fact there's enough working that I find the browser side more stable than Netscape (although not always as functional).
Also, on the endless KDE / Gnome / just a WM choice: I have tried KDE and Gnome both, and found that the tight browser integration caused too many problems for me and I consequently switched to Gnome where the browser isn't so tightly integrated.
I still find myself using a 'KDE' application for building web pages however (webmaker) and that works just fine under Gnome. I've looked at other KDE applications and found that they don't work so well under Gnome though. Why is this? I'd love to see KOffice work OK for me:-)
Are these non-working applications using more features provided by the KDE window manager, or some other part of KDE that I don't see?
Well, I'm using Mozilla to write this reply (build 1999110608), so...
1) Support the damn standards
Mozilla does.
2) Let me just download the browser
I'd have to agree, except that they've managed to get this in a 5.5M download, and it's still supporting mail and news. I too will want a browser that just browses, but Mozilla will do that too - or someone will embed the widget in a simple window without all the mail/news stuff.
3) Tone down the user interface
Funnnily enough the chrome on the current version has back, forward, refresh and stop buttons and they've managed to make the bookmarks toolbar small enough that I actually want it on my screen for a change!
What mozilla does support is 'downloadable chrome' which will mean that smart cookies everywhere will redesign the browser UI, and there should be enough variety for everyone.
4) Keep bookmarks HTML
Mozilla still has, and I agree wholeheartedly
5) LOad time counts
It sure does. Load time, even in this pre-alpha version, is excellent. Also the rendering is progressive, so no waiting for the whole table to be calculated six ways from sunday before you see anything.
6) Make the interface decent
Mozilla improves on quite a few failings of the Netscape interface, and I think the developers are well onto this one. Again, downloadable chrome will help a lot since the look, as well as all of the mouse actions, menus and so forth are all defined in the chrome.
7)...try to make the page look decent anyway
Mozilla does a pretty good job, but it's hard to figure where you should stop with this, and when you do find a page with errors in it, where should the errors appear on the page?
I've often used Netscape in the past to check my pages for errors simply because it is so unforgiving and have found things that simply didn't show up in IE. Error output is 'undefined' and un-definable, and I think that browser-centric behaviour is all that can be expected.
Also, that disagrees with your "Support the damn standards" line, doesn't it?:-)
From what I read on/. earlier in the week, MS mostly fund their development by issuing shares to employees and then having the punter pay for them as they increase in capital value (gross oversimplification).
If MS share price takes a dive because of this, as it naturally should, this must have a huge magnifying effect!
The market value of shares issued to employees last year was _billions_ more than their annual profit. If many of those people decide to bail, they're f**cked.
I know if I had MS shares I'd be flogging them post-haste, and damn the price I get, because their whole share price is a house of cards, with a gasoline burner at the bottom...
There are lots of 'do it all' remotes out there. Sure, a Palm, a wince device or even a laptop can do this, but there are lots of remotes that you can point a remote at and they'll record what it says and assign it to button X as well. The problem with those is usually thnt to assign is not something you want to click once, or something like that.
The flash stuff in this market is really in the 'home automation' crowd. Check out SmartHome for some really good stuff, and at least an intro to the area.
There are some really neat devices out there which are remote controllable, using RF rather than IR (which means it works through walls, couches and so forth) and which output IR to your favourite devices. Snazzy!
Of course, once you start reading about this stuff a remote isn't enough - you want to be just chatting away to your house and having it tell you when the _important_ email arrives...:-)
I have had PRK (Photo-refractive Keratectomy). My sister and her husband have had PRK as well. It's great!
I have met some doctors who new people who had Lasik and had some problems with it. They were probably idiots though as they had had both eyes done at the same time!
PRK generally gives the better results, but it is more painful. Although the operation takes around 20-50 seconds, you are basically out of action for a couple of days, and then you can't do much vision-stressing tasks for another three or four days.
Lasik is supposed to be less painful, and some people find that appealing. The operation take slightly longer (a few minutes, vs 30-50 seconds).
I now have 6/6 (20/20 in imperial measures) vision in one eye, and 6/8 in the other (I think). One isn't perfect anyway, but the other is. I don't have a problem looking at my laptop screen with either eye, and I can see distant things crisply as well.
You can choose to get slightly undercorrected in one eye if you are approaching an age when long-sightedness is starting to become an issue (around 45 - which I am getting on for myself).
I have seen so many bad projects from lack of communication, or simply inability to communicate among large numbers of people. If Schmidt reckons never more than can fit in a conference room, but I bet he wishes he could make his conference rooms smaller.
Novell have some truly large projects, but one person teams are the real powerhouse of a development effort. To make them practicable you need to have a great framework for their work to fit in.
Only when each individual can be productive with a minimum of communication can you have start to have larger groupings which achieve more as you add more members.
I am a director of a small consulting company and we generally find that we get the best people by taking contractors. It also means that we aren't paying them when we haven't got work for them to do.
The downside is that sometimes they find work through other people and they aren't there when we need them later. This has proved to be less of a problem than it might, but we have very loyal contractors because we treat them very well, pay them very well and involve them in the company as much as we can.
We also take on some permanent staff, and permanent staff is what some excellent people want to be. Bear in mind that after the designers have done their design, you need to implement it and that sometimes the 'best' people are wasted on scut work but it still needs to be done. Sometimes people are after the security of a permanent position, and they aren't in the business for fun or anything, but they can be damn good backing on the project nonetheless. Mums returning to the work force can be fantastic in this sort of role, especially if you're willing to cope with them working their own hours and so on.
My sister was a Senior Systems Analyst with a big banking group before she quit to have kids, and when they got a bit older she couldn't find anything but the lowest paying of jobs in the industry, even though all of her analysis and management skills were still completely applicable. She's now the being offered a slice of the organisation she joined simply because she's proved (again) that she can do all that, and because she's the longest serving employee - after only five years.
So: it takes all kinds to make a world...
-- Andrew
Re:I predict a huge market for linux laptops..
on
On Linux Laptops
·
· Score: 1
Up to a point.
I have managed to get an old P75 with 48M of RAM which I use occasionally but I find its too slow for what I tend to use Linux for now.
Nowadays I'm running Gnome or KDE and various packages (e.g. StarOffice) are waaay too slow for realistic use on this. Even on my main machine (also a laptop, but a P233MMX with 128M RAM, 6.4G) I find StarOffice is sometimes frustratingly slow and Gnome is a noticeable performance hog.
Still, yes, for some applications an old 486 laptop would be useful. Problem is most of the applications I really want on my laptop - so that I can 'do them anywhere' are more of your productivity ones, which tend to be X based.
I'd actually like to see a bigger range of effective ratings. It's interesting to see how heavily moderated the current 'question sessions' for Alan Cox and Tim O'Reilly are, with ratings regularly getting up as high as five.
For most posts a rating as high as three is hard to get, but it seems that a rating of two is (relatively) easy. I would like to see some ability to initially bump that by one on a 'karma' basis. After all there is no upper limit and that will only increase the range of likely results.
It would also be nice if I could perhaps select the top-rated 'N' posts, or the top-rated 'X%' of posts. This, especially combined with some sort of karmic head start for posters, would mean that I got a reasonable number of comments back when I looked at a recently posted article.
Karma is a useful concept, and it would be nice if it increased over time as a 'trust relationship' builds up indicating that this person 'generally says something interesting' so that each +1 moderation on a post added +1 karma, and each +25 karma added an automatic +1 onto a posts initial rating. Likewise for -1 moderation, of course, and there could also be some sort of 'karmic decay' over time so that a persons karma decayed by (e.g.) 5% each month.
When I did a meta-moderation there were some comments I might have liked to say "Unfair - add one" and others I would have liked to say "Unfair - subtract one", but no way to indicate that.
My laptop is a couple of years old now and only has a 13.3" screen, so I'm looking forward to my next one (about 8 months off) when I can get one of these:-)
It's gonna get real hard opening it up on the airplane though...
I'm coming up 40 in six months and have had lots of problems progressing upwards. The most annoying thing has to be that almost inevitable shift into management.
I was very lucky a couple of years ago though when I got together with four other friends and we started our own business (the youngest of us is 34).
Now I get to ply the skills I'm interested in plying. What I can do is whatever the company says I can do. I don't have to wear a suit. We're now flat-out working on bringing more Linux applications to the world to run on our web hosting service. If I had of stayed working for other people I'd be running another COBOL project, late, and with a bunch of useless know-nothings that just sent me home each night frustrated.
Although there's still a certain amount of 'management' it can be many and varied as well since I do 'Financial Controller', 'Account Manager' and 'Sales' as well as the more traditional (for a Programmer/Analyst) 'Team Leader' and 'Project Manager' roles.
It was scary when we first started, and six months in was just about desperation, but we've just had our second anniversary and we're over the hump with things looking better and better.
Why not set initial posting level to an average of the final rating of the users previous posts?
This comment rating system is utterly, wonderfully, superlatively fantastic though! I love it! Now I actually read the comments on/. and frequently find them more interesting than the original articles:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Of course the opportunity to overcommit yourself really takes off when you have kids :-)
I see a lot of opportunities to get involved with projects in developing web 'stuff' for them nowadays, which is really great because you can:
The great thing about volunteering to do stuff is that everybody is too busy being grateful for them to be too worried about whether you have 'the right qualifications' and stuff. It doesn't matter how bad a job you do, nobody wants you to leave, regardless, and eventually you get better :-)
There are always interesting community projects going on. Go to you local government (council, shire, whatever) office and find some. Lot's of small museums or educational places are underfunded and run on three parts love, one part sweat and one part community funding. Places like this can always handle an extra pair of hands and if you have a proposal they will listen.
Only a really 'commercial' volunteer organisation will turn down help.
Happy Helping!
Hope that's some use to someone!
And it works, sort of. It works well for me, and it works quite well for my more computer capable clients, but some other clients:
Not that those problems are really majors, but they get in the way, and so they don't always submit their problems.
What I need to do is let people e-mail their problems into it, and exactly how to achieve this is churning away in the back of my mind at the moment.
I've also done a WAP gateway on it so that I (and others, because the whole company uses my system now) can enter timesheets and lookup jobs and such with a WAP phone.
If you're interested in the code I'm sure we can dig something out. It uses Apache / PHP / PostgreSQL and handles through to the billing stage.
E-Mail me if you want more information.
Does anyone know when Debian packages will be released for this?
The Helix Code web site seems to think that Debian (and Corel, Storm, ...) don't exist! Which is kind of a shame, because all of the stuff to distribute a suite of packages such as the ones on the website is all very nicely handled by Debian. After all, I can point to kde.tdyc.org (for example) to get a suite of Debian packages for KDE.
Well no, actually my wife's name is Heather and my Son's name is Max and it just sort of happened :-)
I noticed on the PostgreSQL Hackers list that Thomas Lane said this was very bogus because it appears to re-include his libjpeg as many times as it is used by something else.
Also, is FSF an Author? Is BSD an Author?
One point the chap from Ars Technica misses is the heat output from laptops.
I know that I for one am looking forward to a cooler laptop.
There's been some mention of a new KDE browser effort in the press recently. This is great, as the browser is such an integrated component of KDE and yet the current one doesn't support (e.g.) authentication.
Was there any consideration given to using Gecko as the rendering engine for this?
I'm using mozilla (M11) to post this, and the rendering engine seems pretty much all there now, in fact there's enough working that I find the browser side more stable than Netscape (although not always as functional).
Also, on the endless KDE / Gnome / just a WM choice: I have tried KDE and Gnome both, and found that the tight browser integration caused too many problems for me and I consequently switched to Gnome where the browser isn't so tightly integrated.
I still find myself using a 'KDE' application for building web pages however (webmaker) and that works just fine under Gnome. I've looked at other KDE applications and found that they don't work so well under Gnome though. Why is this? I'd love to see KOffice work OK for me :-)
Are these non-working applications using more features provided by the KDE window manager, or some other part of KDE that I don't see?
Thanks,
Well, I'm using Mozilla to write this reply (build 1999110608), so...
1) Support the damn standards
Mozilla does.
2) Let me just download the browser
I'd have to agree, except that they've managed to get this in a 5.5M download, and it's still supporting mail and news. I too will want a browser that just browses, but Mozilla will do that too - or someone will embed the widget in a simple window without all the mail/news stuff.
3) Tone down the user interface
Funnnily enough the chrome on the current version has back, forward, refresh and stop buttons and they've managed to make the bookmarks toolbar small enough that I actually want it on my screen for a change!
What mozilla does support is 'downloadable chrome' which will mean that smart cookies everywhere will redesign the browser UI, and there should be enough variety for everyone.
4) Keep bookmarks HTML
Mozilla still has, and I agree wholeheartedly
5) LOad time counts
It sure does. Load time, even in this pre-alpha version, is excellent. Also the rendering is progressive, so no waiting for the whole table to be calculated six ways from sunday before you see anything.
6) Make the interface decent
Mozilla improves on quite a few failings of the Netscape interface, and I think the developers are well onto this one. Again, downloadable chrome will help a lot since the look, as well as all of the mouse actions, menus and so forth are all defined in the chrome.
7) ...try to make the page look decent anyway
Mozilla does a pretty good job, but it's hard to figure where you should stop with this, and when you do find a page with errors in it, where should the errors appear on the page?
I've often used Netscape in the past to check my pages for errors simply because it is so unforgiving and have found things that simply didn't show up in IE. Error output is 'undefined' and un-definable, and I think that browser-centric behaviour is all that can be expected.
Also, that disagrees with your "Support the damn standards" line, doesn't it? :-)
No, its free, according to the article.
Things might change in future I guess, but its premature to suggest that now.
From what I read on /. earlier in the week, MS mostly fund their development by issuing shares to employees and then having the punter pay for them as they increase in capital value (gross oversimplification).
If MS share price takes a dive because of this, as it naturally should, this must have a huge magnifying effect!
The market value of shares issued to employees last year was _billions_ more than their annual profit. If many of those people decide to bail, they're f**cked.
I know if I had MS shares I'd be flogging them post-haste, and damn the price I get, because their whole share price is a house of cards, with a gasoline burner at the bottom...
There are lots of 'do it all' remotes out there. Sure, a Palm, a wince device or even a laptop can do this, but there are lots of remotes that you can point a remote at and they'll record what it says and assign it to button X as well. The problem with those is usually thnt to assign is not something you want to click once, or something like that.
The flash stuff in this market is really in the 'home automation' crowd. Check out SmartHome for some really good stuff, and at least an intro to the area.
There are some really neat devices out there which are remote controllable, using RF rather than IR (which means it works through walls, couches and so forth) and which output IR to your favourite devices. Snazzy!
Of course, once you start reading about this stuff a remote isn't enough - you want to be just chatting away to your house and having it tell you when the _important_ email arrives... :-)
Regards,
I have had PRK (Photo-refractive Keratectomy). My sister and her husband have had PRK as well. It's great!
I have met some doctors who new people who had Lasik and had some problems with it. They were probably idiots though as they had had both eyes done at the same time!
PRK generally gives the better results, but it is more painful. Although the operation takes around 20-50 seconds, you are basically out of action for a couple of days, and then you can't do much vision-stressing tasks for another three or four days.
Lasik is supposed to be less painful, and some people find that appealing. The operation take slightly longer (a few minutes, vs 30-50 seconds).
I now have 6/6 (20/20 in imperial measures) vision in one eye, and 6/8 in the other (I think). One isn't perfect anyway, but the other is. I don't have a problem looking at my laptop screen with either eye, and I can see distant things crisply as well.
You can choose to get slightly undercorrected in one eye if you are approaching an age when long-sightedness is starting to become an issue (around 45 - which I am getting on for myself).
Caveat Emptor applies. YMMV!
I have seen so many bad projects from lack of communication, or simply inability to communicate among large numbers of people. If Schmidt reckons never more than can fit in a conference room, but I bet he wishes he could make his conference rooms smaller.
Novell have some truly large projects, but one person teams are the real powerhouse of a development effort. To make them practicable you need to have a great framework for their work to fit in.
Only when each individual can be productive with a minimum of communication can you have start to have larger groupings which achieve more as you add more members.
Apart from that you should be able to run all of this easily on something like a P450. More RAM would definitely help with the streaming.
Apple's streaming software is one of the best open-source choices out there I believe, but it might work better with *BSD rather than Linux.
Perhaps this will encourage internet advertisers to host their ads outside the US!
I love it! More opportunity for the rest of the world to develop the advertising business.
:^)
I am a director of a small consulting company and we generally find that we get the best people by taking contractors. It also means that we aren't paying them when we haven't got work for them to do.
The downside is that sometimes they find work through other people and they aren't there when we need them later. This has proved to be less of a problem than it might, but we have very loyal contractors because we treat them very well, pay them very well and involve them in the company as much as we can.
We also take on some permanent staff, and permanent staff is what some excellent people want to be. Bear in mind that after the designers have done their design, you need to implement it and that sometimes the 'best' people are wasted on scut work but it still needs to be done. Sometimes people are after the security of a permanent position, and they aren't in the business for fun or anything, but they can be damn good backing on the project nonetheless. Mums returning to the work force can be fantastic in this sort of role, especially if you're willing to cope with them working their own hours and so on.
My sister was a Senior Systems Analyst with a big banking group before she quit to have kids, and when they got a bit older she couldn't find anything but the lowest paying of jobs in the industry, even though all of her analysis and management skills were still completely applicable. She's now the being offered a slice of the organisation she joined simply because she's proved (again) that she can do all that, and because she's the longest serving employee - after only five years.
So: it takes all kinds to make a world...
-- Andrew
Up to a point.
I have managed to get an old P75 with 48M of RAM which I use occasionally but I find its too slow for what I tend to use Linux for now.
Nowadays I'm running Gnome or KDE and various packages (e.g. StarOffice) are waaay too slow for realistic use on this. Even on my main machine (also a laptop, but a P233MMX with 128M RAM, 6.4G) I find StarOffice is sometimes frustratingly slow and Gnome is a noticeable performance hog.
Still, yes, for some applications an old 486 laptop would be useful. Problem is most of the applications I really want on my laptop - so that I can 'do them anywhere' are more of your productivity ones, which tend to be X based.
I'd actually like to see a bigger range of effective ratings. It's interesting to see how heavily moderated the current 'question sessions' for Alan Cox and Tim O'Reilly are, with ratings regularly getting up as high as five.
For most posts a rating as high as three is hard to get, but it seems that a rating of two is (relatively) easy. I would like to see some ability to initially bump that by one on a 'karma' basis. After all there is no upper limit and that will only increase the range of likely results.
It would also be nice if I could perhaps select the top-rated 'N' posts, or the top-rated 'X%' of posts. This, especially combined with some sort of karmic head start for posters, would mean that I got a reasonable number of comments back when I looked at a recently posted article.
Karma is a useful concept, and it would be nice if it increased over time as a 'trust relationship' builds up indicating that this person 'generally says something interesting' so that each +1 moderation on a post added +1 karma, and each +25 karma added an automatic +1 onto a posts initial rating. Likewise for -1 moderation, of course, and there could also be some sort of 'karmic decay' over time so that a persons karma decayed by (e.g.) 5% each month.
When I did a meta-moderation there were some comments I might have liked to say "Unfair - add one" and others I would have liked to say "Unfair - subtract one", but no way to indicate that.
I read slashdot with comments set to "3".
FYI here's a link to the Samsung Electronics press release
My laptop is a couple of years old now and only has a 13.3" screen, so I'm looking forward to my next one (about 8 months off) when I can get one of these :-)
It's gonna get real hard opening it up on the airplane though...
I'm coming up 40 in six months and have had lots of problems progressing upwards. The most annoying thing has to be that almost inevitable shift into management.
I was very lucky a couple of years ago though when I got together with four other friends and we started our own business (the youngest of us is 34).
Now I get to ply the skills I'm interested in plying. What I can do is whatever the company says I can do. I don't have to wear a suit. We're now flat-out working on bringing more Linux applications to the world to run on our web hosting service. If I had of stayed working for other people I'd be running another COBOL project, late, and with a bunch of useless know-nothings that just sent me home each night frustrated.
Although there's still a certain amount of 'management' it can be many and varied as well since I do 'Financial Controller', 'Account Manager' and 'Sales' as well as the more traditional (for a Programmer/Analyst) 'Team Leader' and 'Project Manager' roles.
It was scary when we first started, and six months in was just about desperation, but we've just had our second anniversary and we're over the hump with things looking better and better.
If everyone is using encryption then these e-mail virii will have something new to send around the internet.
Private key, anyone?
Or maybe they'll just corrupt it for you. Wouldn't that be just great...
Why not set initial posting level to an average of the final rating of the users previous posts?
This comment rating system is utterly, wonderfully, superlatively fantastic though! I love it! Now I actually read the comments on /. and frequently find them more interesting than the original articles :-)