Wow, look at the Word screenshots. XML tags all over the place. Hmmm, looks familiar - yes folks - Word processing with the simplicity of LateX is back.
Guess what IT training all over the world is going to be doing - teaching people to use something Latex like. I can just imagine teaching every office worker how simple all these tags are.
I read this book, kinda enjoyed it and felt a little daft. Really the book is largely about neurotic reasonably successful people complaining about their life didn't work out perfectly and not having the grit to stick with something and make something of it.
And hey, it is definitely something I do.
The NYT had an excellent and quite humourous
review that is worth reading.
Absolutely. People who only hire cheap engineers out of college are mad. It's false economy.
I work with a guy who is 42 and has programmed with punch cards. He's a god. He has solutions for problems that he has had to face 10 times and really knows how to get through them.
The best reason for experience being so valuable with programming is The Law of Leaky Abstractions. Sure, most of us can learn the basics of a language pretty quickly, but to be really good with anything takes time.
The problem is, if the industry stays wildly unpredictable and shaky, there won't be any old timers around. It's funny, this seems to be the American way. Invent and exploit new thing with a huge labour pool and amazing capital markets, grow rapidly, slash and burn and then watch Asia and Europe build stable industries. BMW, Airbus anyone ?
Then again, if you're in biotech the US might be the place to be for the next 10 years.
The Rosetta Stone courses are meant to be good. They are reasonably expensive, but I've only heard and read good things about them. Anyone have other experiences ?
You can pick them up on Ebay cheaper than retail on a pretty regular basis.
To produce really good language learning content integrated with audio and video is an expensive and pretty repetitive thing to do. Making it free is like making free games, it's one of those areas where the open source free way of doing things falls down.
Nonsense. If Hollywood really can't protect it's works the film industry will die. It's an economic question. A reasonably large budgeted feature film costs $100 M to make and involves at a very rough estimate around 100 person years of labour. If the money cannot be recouped reasonably it's all over. No more Matrix, no more Fight Club, no Harry Potter, no Lord of the Rings.
It should be noted that the game industry has managed it. Consoles exist to some degree because console games can be made sufficiently difficult to copy that most people can't be bothered. And with some games costing upwards of $10 M to develop this couldn't happen sooner.
The current music industry is another story. They are dead. In 1970 the only way a record could be made and distributed was with a recording studio that cost thousands, perhaps millions, and expensive duplication equipment along with an expensive distribution chain. These days you can by a digital 8 track recorder and a PC for less than a grand and do it all yourself and then distribute it over the net. Mp3s and file sharing will change the economics of music and kill the RIAA but they will never kill it, with films it's different, digital technology offers the possibility of wrecking Hollywood.
Think about it for a sec, before putting up your slashdotisms.
Looks like the editors just got trolled. 'Netgraft' indeed. Perhaps this guy is a mate of the Afghan with a C64 that so intrigued Katz, speaking of which, what happened to him ?
Airline fares have dropped since deregulation overall. If you look at the price of an airline ticket in 1975 and now in real terms it has dropped more than just about anything else, a car is still the same percentage of yearly earnings, food and whatnot.
Also, deregulation sent long distance phone calls plummeting. The US set this up.
However, deregulation does not work everywhere. The US mobile phone market has been a testament to this, but on the flipside 3G may be easier in the US than in Europe.
Dergulation is not a panacea, but on the other hand it isn't all bad.
Well, actually the ability of Excel to act as a primitive database was one of the reasons it has wound up being so popular.
Joel Spolsky wored with MS on the Excel team and
points out that in user studies they did the ability of excel to record data in such a way was important in it's adoptance. Check out the chapter
from his excellent book User Interface Design for programmers and search for excel.
No way. There are heaps of tiny resellers on ebay who use ebay as a marketplace. I bought a digital camera at 2/3 of retail price and a laptop at 1/2 retail. The sites you link to seem good, but their range is nothing compared to Ebay.
The excitement is due to the people behind the phone and their excellent PR department and the fact that a number of the people who worked there used to work at famous places around Silicon Valley.
There is an article over at the Inquirer which talks about this.
These people are smart, they know that the slashdot crowd is filled with people who are early adopters and have happily suckered us in. I wonder if they are astroturfing slashdot as well.
The project sounds interesting. I'd email the big museums around the world to see what they have to say on the issue.
I have had some experience with people scanning in 3D objects. It's really fiddly and error prone but no impossible. The hardware all sucks but it's usable. Trackers all drift and behave according to their own rules. Smaller objects ( i.e. 20cm cubed or less ) can be more easily scanned with 3D scanners, but these are hideously expensive. You might want to contract out a company for the smaller stuff, you can find them easily enough with Google.
For the room and building scans DONT use VRML. Get an someone who can handle a 3D CAD package to build the thing with textures from photographs. Quicktime VR is neat, but not enough probably.
If there is a University nearby check if they have courses for people doing architecture and 3D graphics. If they do you could give some students some very valuable experience and get cheaper labour for yourself.
Ani DiFranco is a great example. By running her own record label she makes way more profits per cd than virtually anyone else. The Economist even wrote about that.
There are heaps of other bands who have ground out grass roots support. Henry Rollins and Black Flag, Phish etc. DIY is the way.
This one is different. Software used to be a smaller percentage part of the cost of a PC.
Today, a PC that is decent for office work is, say $1000 - of which $400 is MS software. Make that almost zero with 90% of the functionality and 99% of the average office workers used functionality and you have an unbeatable deal.
Secondly DR-DOS presumably cost a considerable fraction of the cost of DOS. Linux / Open Office / Mozilla / Samba on a per seat basis costs say $20 as opposed to $400 - that is 5%. That sort of saving is too great too ignore.
Finally, Linux and open source tools have thousands of people working on them and despite disputes between KDE and Gnome and whatnot everyone contributes to the strength of Open source and Linux.
The only thing holding Linux back is network effects from the massive installed Windows base. But that will be overcome with time.
There have been half a dozen or more of these stories of government and large IT sections adopting Linux in areas with thousands of seats. The tide has turned.
Re:Oh great! What am I supposed to read now? Salon
on
Satirewire Calls It Quits
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Check out Gagpipe.
It's a daily updated list of a bunch of humour sites on the web. Great stuff.
BMW did the same thing in Australia. Initially, in the 70s or so, Beamers were cheap and people thought they were just another car, then they jacked up the price.
The reason it is a clincher is because it is the clincher for office work. Most office workers need an Office suite, a web browser, an email client, shared files and groupware. Office machines are probably 80% of the commercial market or more.
All the pieces are there except for the groupware. Bring that into the equation and there is no reason to pay MS $400 or so for every seat in the office.
It'd be really interesting to find out what these big Linux installs like Telstra in Australia and so on are proposing to solve this problem.
For games, D3D is probably better for games right now as it matches the hardware more closely, but for any longer term graphics work basing it on D3D would be a big risk. The result, D3D is the games king and OpenGL is used more for longer term graphics projects that may be cross platform. Also, OpenGL is much better for anyone learning graphics because it is so much cleaner than D3D.
Both have advantages and disadvantages and both fill important parts of the spectrum.
Which one will win ? Who knows and indeed who cares, both are well supported and actively developed on. In 5 years, when graphics hardware has gotten to the point where it is really stable then we might have a winner ( my bets on OpenGL because it's so much cleaner ) but until then the two standards both serve a purpose.
The other thing about VHS and Beta was that when the original standards clashed the maximum length of Beta tapes was less than a full movie. The annoyance of having to change the tape half way through was also a major factor in why VHS won. By the time this was corrected it was all over.
Isn't there a simple answer to this ? Just listen to foreign stations. The Internet is international. Make the RIAA lobby every government in every place, or attempt to block countries.
To start off - try JJJ which is an Australian alternativish station. For cool beats try Xanu FM.
First, I'm on an H1B, so this of course has my bias.
Allowing a reasonable number of well trained foreigners into the US is a very smart idea. Just think about how much it costs the US government to educate a single citizen. People are a cost on society until they are at least 18. Via H1B programs you can get people that another country has paid for to come and contribute.
Foreigners have made considerable contributions to technology in the US. The Manhattan project team had large numbers of refugees in it. Important parts of the team that put man on the moon came from the German rocket program. Andy Grove and a number of other high tech pioneers came from outside the US. Bringing in foreigners is smart.
It probably does make some impact on salaries in the short term, but the benefit is that by getting bright people into the US it helps keep the US as the world's leading developer of technology. So I'd argue that the overall effect is positive on salaries. There are, of course, abuses, as there is in any scheme, but overall the program is a good idea.
It is interesting to note that a number of European countries, Germany especially, have picked up on the idea that H1B like visas are a good idea. I'm totally annoyed that my home country is notoriously difficult for educated people to emigrate to. Personally, it's one of the US's great strengths and more countries should behave in this way.
Finally, the US government even makes a profit on H1B processing. To get an H1B processed costs $1125. I've heard that the average processing time is in the order of fractions of an hour.
Slashdot Mirror
Guess what IT training all over the world is going to be doing - teaching people to use something Latex like. I can just imagine teaching every office worker how simple all these tags are.
BWA HA HA HA HA
This is going to be funny.
And hey, it is definitely something I do.
The NYT had an excellent and quite humourous review that is worth reading.
If it were inflation then the lowest grade would be a B, but the highest grade would be a A++++ or something.
When inflation occurs the prices of everything don't become equal, the rating measure insteads shifts.
Also, pirating the games and downloading requires some, albeit very basic, level of technical competence.
Popfile works reasonably for Outlook and Outlook Express.
I work with a guy who is 42 and has programmed with punch cards. He's a god. He has solutions for problems that he has had to face 10 times and really knows how to get through them.
The best reason for experience being so valuable with programming is The Law of Leaky Abstractions. Sure, most of us can learn the basics of a language pretty quickly, but to be really good with anything takes time.
The problem is, if the industry stays wildly unpredictable and shaky, there won't be any old timers around. It's funny, this seems to be the American way. Invent and exploit new thing with a huge labour pool and amazing capital markets, grow rapidly, slash and burn and then watch Asia and Europe build stable industries. BMW, Airbus anyone ?
Then again, if you're in biotech the US might be the place to be for the next 10 years.
You can pick them up on Ebay cheaper than retail on a pretty regular basis.
To produce really good language learning content integrated with audio and video is an expensive and pretty repetitive thing to do. Making it free is like making free games, it's one of those areas where the open source free way of doing things falls down.
It should be noted that the game industry has managed it. Consoles exist to some degree because console games can be made sufficiently difficult to copy that most people can't be bothered. And with some games costing upwards of $10 M to develop this couldn't happen sooner.
The current music industry is another story. They are dead. In 1970 the only way a record could be made and distributed was with a recording studio that cost thousands, perhaps millions, and expensive duplication equipment along with an expensive distribution chain. These days you can by a digital 8 track recorder and a PC for less than a grand and do it all yourself and then distribute it over the net. Mp3s and file sharing will change the economics of music and kill the RIAA but they will never kill it, with films it's different, digital technology offers the possibility of wrecking Hollywood.
Think about it for a sec, before putting up your slashdotisms.
Looks like the editors just got trolled. 'Netgraft' indeed. Perhaps this guy is a mate of the Afghan with a C64 that so intrigued Katz, speaking of which, what happened to him ?
Also, deregulation sent long distance phone calls plummeting. The US set this up.
However, deregulation does not work everywhere. The US mobile phone market has been a testament to this, but on the flipside 3G may be easier in the US than in Europe.
Dergulation is not a panacea, but on the other hand it isn't all bad.
Joel Spolsky wored with MS on the Excel team and points out that in user studies they did the ability of excel to record data in such a way was important in it's adoptance. Check out the chapter from his excellent book User Interface Design for programmers and search for excel.
No way. There are heaps of tiny resellers on ebay who use ebay as a marketplace. I bought a digital camera at 2/3 of retail price and a laptop at 1/2 retail. The sites you link to seem good, but their range is nothing compared to Ebay.
There is an article over at the Inquirer which talks about this.
These people are smart, they know that the slashdot crowd is filled with people who are early adopters and have happily suckered us in. I wonder if they are astroturfing slashdot as well.
I have had some experience with people scanning in 3D objects. It's really fiddly and error prone but no impossible. The hardware all sucks but it's usable. Trackers all drift and behave according to their own rules. Smaller objects ( i.e. 20cm cubed or less ) can be more easily scanned with 3D scanners, but these are hideously expensive. You might want to contract out a company for the smaller stuff, you can find them easily enough with Google.
For the room and building scans DONT use VRML. Get an someone who can handle a 3D CAD package to build the thing with textures from photographs. Quicktime VR is neat, but not enough probably.
If there is a University nearby check if they have courses for people doing architecture and 3D graphics. If they do you could give some students some very valuable experience and get cheaper labour for yourself.
There are heaps of other bands who have ground out grass roots support. Henry Rollins and Black Flag, Phish etc. DIY is the way.
Today, a PC that is decent for office work is, say $1000 - of which $400 is MS software. Make that almost zero with 90% of the functionality and 99% of the average office workers used functionality and you have an unbeatable deal.
Secondly DR-DOS presumably cost a considerable fraction of the cost of DOS. Linux / Open Office / Mozilla / Samba on a per seat basis costs say $20 as opposed to $400 - that is 5%. That sort of saving is too great too ignore.
Finally, Linux and open source tools have thousands of people working on them and despite disputes between KDE and Gnome and whatnot everyone contributes to the strength of Open source and Linux.
The only thing holding Linux back is network effects from the massive installed Windows base. But that will be overcome with time.
There have been half a dozen or more of these stories of government and large IT sections adopting Linux in areas with thousands of seats. The tide has turned.
Check out Gagpipe. It's a daily updated list of a bunch of humour sites on the web. Great stuff.
BMW did the same thing in Australia. Initially, in the 70s or so, Beamers were cheap and people thought they were just another car, then they jacked up the price.
All the pieces are there except for the groupware. Bring that into the equation and there is no reason to pay MS $400 or so for every seat in the office.
It'd be really interesting to find out what these big Linux installs like Telstra in Australia and so on are proposing to solve this problem.
For games, D3D is probably better for games right now as it matches the hardware more closely, but for any longer term graphics work basing it on D3D would be a big risk. The result, D3D is the games king and OpenGL is used more for longer term graphics projects that may be cross platform. Also, OpenGL is much better for anyone learning graphics because it is so much cleaner than D3D.
Both have advantages and disadvantages and both fill important parts of the spectrum.
Which one will win ? Who knows and indeed who cares, both are well supported and actively developed on. In 5 years, when graphics hardware has gotten to the point where it is really stable then we might have a winner ( my bets on OpenGL because it's so much cleaner ) but until then the two standards both serve a purpose.
The other thing about VHS and Beta was that when the original standards clashed the maximum length of Beta tapes was less than a full movie. The annoyance of having to change the tape half way through was also a major factor in why VHS won. By the time this was corrected it was all over.
To start off - try JJJ which is an Australian alternativish station. For cool beats try Xanu FM.
Allowing a reasonable number of well trained foreigners into the US is a very smart idea. Just think about how much it costs the US government to educate a single citizen. People are a cost on society until they are at least 18. Via H1B programs you can get people that another country has paid for to come and contribute.
Foreigners have made considerable contributions to technology in the US. The Manhattan project team had large numbers of refugees in it. Important parts of the team that put man on the moon came from the German rocket program. Andy Grove and a number of other high tech pioneers came from outside the US. Bringing in foreigners is smart.
It probably does make some impact on salaries in the short term, but the benefit is that by getting bright people into the US it helps keep the US as the world's leading developer of technology. So I'd argue that the overall effect is positive on salaries. There are, of course, abuses, as there is in any scheme, but overall the program is a good idea.
It is interesting to note that a number of European countries, Germany especially, have picked up on the idea that H1B like visas are a good idea. I'm totally annoyed that my home country is notoriously difficult for educated people to emigrate to. Personally, it's one of the US's great strengths and more countries should behave in this way.
Finally, the US government even makes a profit on H1B processing. To get an H1B processed costs $1125. I've heard that the average processing time is in the order of fractions of an hour.
The Economist has just put up an article about how Open Source's future in the world, and how bright it looks.
And indeed, it has led to its own boom in housing prices in the South of the US. If it wasn't for AC who would live in Texas or Florida ?
This isn't to say AC is all good, as other posters point out it is over used in the US, but that doesn't reduce its importance.