At home I have the freedom to create exactly the work environment I want, and that's what I've done. My home office -- about 10' X 12' -- contains a natural wood work table (that I made myself) at *my* perfect working height, not someone else's, a futon sofa, a ski exerciser, a TV and stereo, lots of shelving, some art I like on the wall, and a nice closet to store what would be clutter in a cube or other normal office space.
I have bright, happy colors -- mostly blues and yellows -- around me. I have thick carpet and usually work barefoot. I have a ceiling fan to stir a little air, and a big window to look out at the neighborhood. And when I want to get out of the office and the weather is decent (which is most of the time here in Florida), I take my laptop and work outside. If I feel frustrated by work I either hop on the exercise machine or walk around the neighborhood for a few minutes.
My wife doesn't work outside the house, either. She's home most of the day but busy painting. We take breaks and eat together every day.
IRC is my main communication with coworkers -- who are scattered all over N. America -- but now that we all have unlimited long distance (VoIP or telco) it's no big deal to pick up the phone and chat by voice if we're in the mood.
Every morning when I get up, I start my coffee, then comb my hair and put on clean clothes. Working at home doesn't mean you should be a slob. I keep my office clean.
I work 60+ hours per week, but I don't feel overworked because if there's nothing immediate that needs my attention I am free to go to a store or to the beach or take my little sailboat out in the middle of the day. I may work from 6 or 7 untill 11 or 12, go out until 3 or 4 or 5, and come back to work. On days when it looks like the sunset is going to be particularly spectacular, my wife and I often head to the beach (10 miles) to watch it. I try *not* to let my schedule get too stable and boring. I do some of my best work at night, and have no problem spending most daylight hours doing non-work things, and writing furiously late in the evening or early in the morning.
I've been working from home -- recently for OSDN/Andover, before that writing freelance and running a small limo service -- for over 10 years. It takes a little self-discipline to keep productive and sane, but I've never really missed my former "go to work every day" life.
Overall, I feel the freedom of working from home beats going to an office on a set schedule. The total time I work really isn't much more than most people spend working plus getting to and from work, and I get a lot more done because I can work when I'm most productive instead of trying to be productive on a set schedule.
"Interstitial" Web ads are ones you see when you click from the main page of a site to an article page and, instead, you see a whole-page ad you must click past to get to the page you wanted to see.
This is one of many online ad styles you're likely to see becoming more popular if enough people start using ad blocking software to make a noticeable difference in commercial site ad revenues.
Yahoo Hong Kong is already selling them: See what they look like here.
- Robin
Re:Creators' Rights Question Didn't Make the Cut,
on
Neil Gaiman Responds
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, him too.:)
- R
Re:Creators' Rights Question Didn't Make the Cut,
on
Neil Gaiman Responds
·
· Score: 4, Informative
We didn't send Neal that question because he's written a fair amount about P2P and filesharing on his own site, and we try to stick to questions the interview guest hasn't already answered elsewhere.
I just tried to find registration info for a spammer's site so I could send an invoice in accordance with my bulk email ToS at http://roblimo.com, and VeriSign's lookup was down.
Glad to know these people want others like them to play a stronger role in running the Internet, truly it does.
If you run Martin Fink's statement through your CorporateSpeak Reverse Obfuscation Defenestrationator(tm), you'll find that he said more or less what Timothy said he did.
Infinium signed a lease on some downtown Sarasota "class a" space with much local fanfare, including articles in the dominant local daily paper, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. And RoBrady, the company that did the physical console design (which I saw with my own eyes) is in the phone book and easy to find.
But as far as I could see, the only thing *important* about Infinium was that they were trying to build an online, "on demand" game delivery/sales system. And, as I said in my article, I expect other entrepreneurs will soon figure out ways to provide that service better/faster/cheaper than Infinium.
I suppose, one day, I ought to go look at Infinium again and see what progress they've made, if any. Might even take my camera this time.
That interview you reference was in 1999, four years ago almost to the day. It was the first Slashdot reader-generated interview ever, which is why I particularly wanted to talk with Bruce this week.
I don't know how things have been in your life, but in mine, in Bruce's and in the rest of the world -- and most especially in the worlds of Linux and Open Source -- many things have changed since then.
Good historical interest to see the differences in questions *and* answers between then and now, but I wouldn't exactly call it a dupe.
You may not have noticed, but some media outlets interview the same people over and over.
Heck, I saw an interview with that President Bush guy a couple of days ago on the TV news, and I swear they quoted him just last year...
I use and *need* review and version features for complex writing projects, especially book manuscripts that may go through a technical editor, "style" editor, and production editor, plus an art department person or two, before they get sent to the typesetter.
Good thing OpenOffice has all those features (and that they interoperate with MS Word's versions), isn't it?:)
- Robin
Danger to yachts?
on
A Mighty Wind
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The danger or at least inconvenience to pleasure boaters and commercial fishermen is a big reason the locals say they're against this offshore windmill farm. That makes no sense. It looks to me like there would be plenty of space between the towers for a pretty large yacht or fishing boat to pass through the line of windmills.
Not only that, how hard would it be to provide several wide passages between selected towers for the big-boat people, and mark them with standard channel navigation buoys?
I have trouble understanding how any sailor could be against this project. I mean, if you take a look at my boat, you'll see that it openly and unashamedly uses wind as its primary power source.
But don't worry about me, Nantucket Sound people, I promise not to sully your view with my litle wind-powered boat. It's a lot cheaper to live and sail here in Florida... and we can sail year-round, too.:)
- Robin
PS - I'd be okay with windmills off the shore in the Gulf of Mexico. They'd be a lot better than the environmentally destructive offshore oil rigs Pres. Bush wants to put here -- but his brother Jeb, FL governor, keeps fighting against, so far successfully, although the oil people keep attacking and handing out the bribes, so sooner or later they'll probably get to do their damage unless we manage get the reflubicans out of office first.
I've written one book, co-authored another, and I'm working on yet another one. I speak regularly at technical conferences. I'm sure my English usage is on a par with yours, possibly better.
And yet, when I was younger I did mostly blue-collar work. I was a soldier, a mechanic, an electronics technician, a cabbie, and a limo driver. And I've done a little short-order cooking and dishwashing "in between," too.
In my off hours, back then, I wrote a little fiction, which got me some awards and ego strokes but never really paid the bills. (I "turned pro" as a writer only after I switched to non-fiction, which tends to pay far better than fiction, on average.)
Jack London worked on fishing boats off and on, and no sane person complains about how he spoke or wrote. He's just one example. There are thousands, of others. And not just writers.... remember a guy named Abe Lincoln? He did labor work before he got into the lawyer business, and later into politics.
Don't knock blue-collar work. There's nothing wrong with having a trade, and there's no reason you can't go home from your job doing front end alignments and compose music, create abstract sculpture or write (hopefully free/open) software.
Writing and editing are already global. I compete with peers all over the world. The U.S. and Europe are the big consumers, but my work has appeared in publications elsewhere, including India, Africa, and the Middle East.
Some of us "make it" as writers, and most don't. Some write for free -- or nearly so -- because they love to write.
If I lost my job, and didn't want to take another editing job or put out the energy it takes to make a living freelancing full-time, I'd go back to "real work" (probably cab driving) without thinking any less of myself -- or giving up any of my vocabulary or language skills.
I would still write, and I might write better and more interesting stories at that, because I wouldn't be faced with constant deadlines, and I could pick and choose my subject matter instead of sticking to a particular publication's specialty or area of interest.
As it is with writers today, so it will be with programmers tomorrow. So don't knock tradesmen and other hands-on workers. One day you might be one yourself. (And you would probably still program on the side, wouldn't you?)
With 802.11b I can work on my laptop in my living room, on my sunporch, in my yard or even across the street.
I can go to a friend's house and get online instantly without plugging anything in or messing around with IP settings, thanks to DHCP + 80211.b. Conversely, I can invite friends over and they can be online instantly at my place.
802.11b has totally changed the concept of "office" for me. I no longer really have or need one, just a drawer to hold a few paper files and a place to pu my printer -- specifically in the cabinet under my TV, along with my DSL modem and WAP/router.
Once in a long while when I'm away from home and there's no better connection available, I use my cell phone to connect my laptop to the Internet. I don't find a wire between the phone and the laptop inconvenient. I don't really mind a wire between my cell phone and headset, either, since I only plug in the headset for long calls.
My refrigerator, TV, electric stove, microwave oven, bathtub, and the pair of plastic pink flamingos in my back yard all seem to function just fine without being connected to each other or the Internet.
Okay, so Bluetooth is groovy if you want to walk around festooned with gadgets and don't want to have wires running between them. Most of us don't do that. Really, we don't. And I don't think a large percentage of the population ever will. What's the point? Aren't we connected enough already?
More and more, I find myself leaving my cell phone home when I go to the beach or the market or kayaking or whatever. I like (and NEED) breaks from instant access to stay sane.
I simply haven't figured out what Bluetooth would do for me besides eliminating the (short, easily controlled) wire between my cell phone and headset, and the wired laptop/cell phone connection I rarely use because cell phone connectivity is slow and expensive.
So I don't care about Bluetooth. Neither, as far as I can tell, do 99.9999999% of the other people on the planet.
When I was a child, my parents were active in the Sierra Club's Hundred Peaks Section. (In fact, my father died on a Sierra Club hike in 1970.)
Almost all listed peaks have 'logbooks' at their tops that you sign when you 'bag' that peak. These logbooks are in ammo cans or tupperware containers or whatever -- obviously not natural, but I don't recall anynone ever considering them 'litter.'
I still like to hike (and sail and, recently, kayak) and explore wilderness areas. And I appreciate them in the best possible sense. I leave no trash and usually take some out with me. I do not own a GPS, since I am a competent 'old fashioned' navigator on both land and water and do not need one, but geocaching looks like fun, and if I was going to get involved in it I'd tend toward the wilderness variety.
Getting outdoors and enjoying it, whether in a city, a forest or a swamp, helps you appreciate your environment, whatever it is. I think parks ought to *encourage* geocaching, even host geocaching events, in order to build public support and as a way to encourage volunteerism.
This is true. It was a fine question, but it seemed silly to pass it on to Bram since he had already answered it elsewhere. I really don't like to ask someone a question they've answered somewhere an intelligent Slashdot reader can find in a few minutes with a search engine. That's why every interview "call for questions" has a link to the interviewee's home page, and usually to a FAQ or CV page or some such.
BTW, jamie (Slashdot author) is a major BitTorrent user/fan...
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I heard these lines when I was a kid in the 1950s/1960s, except they said "Mad Magazine" instead of "video games" back then. Every teacher and parent yelled about how comic books and Mad Magazine would rot our brains, and how we should read nothing but "real" books, blah blah, blah.
The funny thing is, all the major comics-reading kids I knew grew up to be major book-reading adults.
My first *pleasure* reading was comic books. I later graduated to "juvenile" science fiction, even later to adult fiction and non-fiction. And eventually I became a full-time, professional writer.
Comic books taught me something my school's reading material didn't: That reading can and should be fun. Once I learned that, I was off and running.
So go ahead. Keep telling kids that comics are bad so they learn to read for pleasure behind your back. There is nothing that makes a kid's joy sweeter than making sure he or she must defy adult authority to get it.
I used to run a limo company from my home, first in Baltimore County, MD, later in Howard County. Customers rarely came to my home; once in a while someone wanted to inspect my vehicle before they hired me for a special event like a wedding, but that was about it.
I had all appropriate licenses and took a home office deduction on my income taxes. The law in both jurisdictions said I could run a business from my home that didn't generate "excessive traffic or noise," which I didn't. So I was 100% legal.
Virtually every shareware developer I know works from home, no problem.
Many graphic artists work from home, no problem.
A majority of the people whose bylines you see on Slashdot work from home either all or most of the time.
Marty Roesch started SourceFire, the "commercialization of Snort" from his home. He was selling/shipping hardware, not just writing software, and he got away with it for a good while. (He has an office now - the business got too big for the house - his wife started getting upset at having boxes all over the kitchen and the sales manager working from a card table in the living room.)
A neighbor of mine across the street installs satellite TV dishes and works from home. Every week or two a large truck comes with a bunch of systems, and he and his son unload them, then the truck goes away. He's probably right on the edge of the law, but I'm not going to complain and neither is the president of the community association, who lives next to us -- and is a computer programmer who does a lot of work from home.
It depends on your neighbors and your relations with them more than anything, I think. If you have clients coming into a ritzy gated community via noisy helicopter 3 times a day, and you have a lot of workers who sit on your lawn and drink beer and get rowdy during breaks, you're going to have problems. If you're in a normal working class community and know your neighbors, and stay fairly quiet, hey! You're working! The worst thing that's likely to happen is that once they realize you're around all the time and that you know something about computers, they'll stop by a lot and ask you lots of Windows questions...
Click on "File," select "save page as" in the dropdown menu, decide which directory you want it in, and perhaps change the title from the default, which may be something like "article.pl" or "21CHEM.html," to something more informative for you.
Then click "save" and you've got that page's HTML and text (but not graphics, although the graphics may appear in the saved article if you're online IF the publication whose page you saved uses absolute rather than relative tags to produce images).
I often do this with news pages I think may be useful to me in the future. Many newspaper sites give you recent articles free, but charge for archived ones. If you think you're going to need the information in, say, a NY Times article a month from now, save it today!
Slashdot Mirror
(A special singalong post)
Just sort by the facts, Jack
Or thread front to back...
Set up to nest 'em, Clem,
Just set yourself free
Subjects are the way to sort,
So pick the best subjects, Mort
No need to lose the story, Rory,
Just set yoursef free
Hop on the flat bus, Gus
No need to discuss much
Don't post that flame, blaine,
Just set yourself free
- Robin
They already monitor the BSD email lists and know what all 25 of you think. :)
- Robin
(ducks and covers)
At home I have the freedom to create exactly the work environment I want, and that's what I've done. My home office -- about 10' X 12' -- contains a natural wood work table (that I made myself) at *my* perfect working height, not someone else's, a futon sofa, a ski exerciser, a TV and stereo, lots of shelving, some art I like on the wall, and a nice closet to store what would be clutter in a cube or other normal office space.
I have bright, happy colors -- mostly blues and yellows -- around me. I have thick carpet and usually work barefoot. I have a ceiling fan to stir a little air, and a big window to look out at the neighborhood. And when I want to get out of the office and the weather is decent (which is most of the time here in Florida), I take my laptop and work outside. If I feel frustrated by work I either hop on the exercise machine or walk around the neighborhood for a few minutes.
My wife doesn't work outside the house, either. She's home most of the day but busy painting. We take breaks and eat together every day.
IRC is my main communication with coworkers -- who are scattered all over N. America -- but now that we all have unlimited long distance (VoIP or telco) it's no big deal to pick up the phone and chat by voice if we're in the mood.
Every morning when I get up, I start my coffee, then comb my hair and put on clean clothes. Working at home doesn't mean you should be a slob. I keep my office clean.
I work 60+ hours per week, but I don't feel overworked because if there's nothing immediate that needs my attention I am free to go to a store or to the beach or take my little sailboat out in the middle of the day. I may work from 6 or 7 untill 11 or 12, go out until 3 or 4 or 5, and come back to work. On days when it looks like the sunset is going to be particularly spectacular, my wife and I often head to the beach (10 miles) to watch it. I try *not* to let my schedule get too stable and boring. I do some of my best work at night, and have no problem spending most daylight hours doing non-work things, and writing furiously late in the evening or early in the morning.
I've been working from home -- recently for OSDN/Andover, before that writing freelance and running a small limo service -- for over 10 years. It takes a little self-discipline to keep productive and sane, but I've never really missed my former "go to work every day" life.
Overall, I feel the freedom of working from home beats going to an office on a set schedule. The total time I work really isn't much more than most people spend working plus getting to and from work, and I get a lot more done because I can work when I'm most productive instead of trying to be productive on a set schedule.
- Robin
"Interstitial" Web ads are ones you see when you click from the main page of a site to an article page and, instead, you see a whole-page ad you must click past to get to the page you wanted to see.
This is one of many online ad styles you're likely to see becoming more popular if enough people start using ad blocking software to make a noticeable difference in commercial site ad revenues.
Yahoo Hong Kong is already selling them: See what they look like here.
- Robin
Yeah, him too. :)
- R
We didn't send Neal that question because he's written a fair amount about P2P and filesharing on his own site, and we try to stick to questions the interview guest hasn't already answered elsewhere.
- Robin
The problem here is that Neal Gaiman reads Slashdot enough that he might have set you up for that line on purpose... :)
- Robin
Glad to know these people want others like them to play a stronger role in running the Internet, truly it does.
- Robin 'Roblimo' Miller
No, Timothy got it right.
If you run Martin Fink's statement through your CorporateSpeak Reverse Obfuscation Defenestrationator(tm), you'll find that he said more or less what Timothy said he did.
- Robin
Infinium signed a lease on some downtown Sarasota "class a" space with much local fanfare, including articles in the dominant local daily paper, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. And RoBrady, the company that did the physical console design (which I saw with my own eyes) is in the phone book and easy to find.
But as far as I could see, the only thing *important* about Infinium was that they were trying to build an online, "on demand" game delivery/sales system. And, as I said in my article, I expect other entrepreneurs will soon figure out ways to provide that service better/faster/cheaper than Infinium.
I suppose, one day, I ought to go look at Infinium again and see what progress they've made, if any. Might even take my camera this time.
- Robin
Florida has no state income tax, and doesn't charge sales tax on services...
- Robin
Umm... a dupe?
That interview you reference was in 1999, four years ago almost to the day. It was the first Slashdot reader-generated interview ever, which is why I particularly wanted to talk with Bruce this week.
I don't know how things have been in your life, but in mine, in Bruce's and in the rest of the world -- and most especially in the worlds of Linux and Open Source -- many things have changed since then.
Good historical interest to see the differences in questions *and* answers between then and now, but I wouldn't exactly call it a dupe.
You may not have noticed, but some media outlets interview the same people over and over.
Heck, I saw an interview with that President Bush guy a couple of days ago on the TV news, and I swear they quoted him just last year...
- Robin
I use and *need* review and version features for complex writing projects, especially book manuscripts that may go through a technical editor, "style" editor, and production editor, plus an art department person or two, before they get sent to the typesetter.
:)
Good thing OpenOffice has all those features (and that they interoperate with MS Word's versions), isn't it?
- Robin
The danger or at least inconvenience to pleasure boaters and commercial fishermen is a big reason the locals say they're against this offshore windmill farm. That makes no sense. It looks to me like there would be plenty of space between the towers for a pretty large yacht or fishing boat to pass through the line of windmills.
:)
Not only that, how hard would it be to provide several wide passages between selected towers for the big-boat people, and mark them with standard channel navigation buoys?
I have trouble understanding how any sailor could be against this project. I mean, if you take a look at my boat, you'll see that it openly and unashamedly uses wind as its primary power source.
But don't worry about me, Nantucket Sound people, I promise not to sully your view with my litle wind-powered boat. It's a lot cheaper to live and sail here in Florida... and we can sail year-round, too.
- Robin
PS - I'd be okay with windmills off the shore in the Gulf of Mexico. They'd be a lot better than the environmentally destructive offshore oil rigs Pres. Bush wants to put here -- but his brother Jeb, FL governor, keeps fighting against, so far successfully, although the oil people keep attacking and handing out the bribes, so sooner or later they'll probably get to do their damage unless we manage get the reflubicans out of office first.
Excuse me.
I've written one book, co-authored another, and I'm working on yet another one. I speak regularly at technical conferences. I'm sure my English usage is on a par with yours, possibly better.
And yet, when I was younger I did mostly blue-collar work. I was a soldier, a mechanic, an electronics technician, a cabbie, and a limo driver. And I've done a little short-order cooking and dishwashing "in between," too.
In my off hours, back then, I wrote a little fiction, which got me some awards and ego strokes but never really paid the bills. (I "turned pro" as a writer only after I switched to non-fiction, which tends to pay far better than fiction, on average.)
Jack London worked on fishing boats off and on, and no sane person complains about how he spoke or wrote. He's just one example. There are thousands, of others. And not just writers.... remember a guy named Abe Lincoln? He did labor work before he got into the lawyer business, and later into politics.
Don't knock blue-collar work. There's nothing wrong with having a trade, and there's no reason you can't go home from your job doing front end alignments and compose music, create abstract sculpture or write (hopefully free/open) software.
Writing and editing are already global. I compete with peers all over the world. The U.S. and Europe are the big consumers, but my work has appeared in publications elsewhere, including India, Africa, and the Middle East.
Some of us "make it" as writers, and most don't. Some write for free -- or nearly so -- because they love to write.
If I lost my job, and didn't want to take another editing job or put out the energy it takes to make a living freelancing full-time, I'd go back to "real work" (probably cab driving) without thinking any less of myself -- or giving up any of my vocabulary or language skills.
I would still write, and I might write better and more interesting stories at that, because I wouldn't be faced with constant deadlines, and I could pick and choose my subject matter instead of sticking to a particular publication's specialty or area of interest.
As it is with writers today, so it will be with programmers tomorrow. So don't knock tradesmen and other hands-on workers. One day you might be one yourself. (And you would probably still program on the side, wouldn't you?)
- Robin
Ummm... it looks like a typo in the Physics News Update article. The Brookhaven press release says 15,000 degrees Celsius, not Kelvin :)
- Robin
With 802.11b I can work on my laptop in my living room, on my sunporch, in my yard or even across the street.
I can go to a friend's house and get online instantly without plugging anything in or messing around with IP settings, thanks to DHCP + 80211.b. Conversely, I can invite friends over and they can be online instantly at my place.
802.11b has totally changed the concept of "office" for me. I no longer really have or need one, just a drawer to hold a few paper files and a place to pu my printer -- specifically in the cabinet under my TV, along with my DSL modem and WAP/router.
Once in a long while when I'm away from home and there's no better connection available, I use my cell phone to connect my laptop to the Internet. I don't find a wire between the phone and the laptop inconvenient. I don't really mind a wire between my cell phone and headset, either, since I only plug in the headset for long calls.
My refrigerator, TV, electric stove, microwave oven, bathtub, and the pair of plastic pink flamingos in my back yard all seem to function just fine without being connected to each other or the Internet.
Okay, so Bluetooth is groovy if you want to walk around festooned with gadgets and don't want to have wires running between them. Most of us don't do that. Really, we don't. And I don't think a large percentage of the population ever will. What's the point? Aren't we connected enough already?
More and more, I find myself leaving my cell phone home when I go to the beach or the market or kayaking or whatever. I like (and NEED) breaks from instant access to stay sane.
I simply haven't figured out what Bluetooth would do for me besides eliminating the (short, easily controlled) wire between my cell phone and headset, and the wired laptop/cell phone connection I rarely use because cell phone connectivity is slow and expensive.
So I don't care about Bluetooth. Neither, as far as I can tell, do 99.9999999% of the other people on the planet.
- Robin
I live in a Florida trailer park half-full of retirees, and a *lot* of them have computers and Internet connections. And they have a sewing club...
- Robin
When I was a child, my parents were active in the Sierra Club's Hundred Peaks Section. (In fact, my father died on a Sierra Club hike in 1970.)
Almost all listed peaks have 'logbooks' at their tops that you sign when you 'bag' that peak. These logbooks are in ammo cans or tupperware containers or whatever -- obviously not natural, but I don't recall anynone ever considering them 'litter.'
I still like to hike (and sail and, recently, kayak) and explore wilderness areas. And I appreciate them in the best possible sense. I leave no trash and usually take some out with me. I do not own a GPS, since I am a competent 'old fashioned' navigator on both land and water and do not need one, but geocaching looks like fun, and if I was going to get involved in it I'd tend toward the wilderness variety.
Getting outdoors and enjoying it, whether in a city, a forest or a swamp, helps you appreciate your environment, whatever it is. I think parks ought to *encourage* geocaching, even host geocaching events, in order to build public support and as a way to encourage volunteerism.
- Robin
This is true. It was a fine question, but it seemed silly to pass it on to Bram since he had already answered it elsewhere. I really don't like to ask someone a question they've answered somewhere an intelligent Slashdot reader can find in a few minutes with a search engine. That's why every interview "call for questions" has a link to the interviewee's home page, and usually to a FAQ or CV page or some such.
BTW, jamie (Slashdot author) is a major BitTorrent user/fan...
- Robin
Huh? Bank of America's online banking works just fine with Mozilla running on Linux.
Our previous bank was IE-only, and their online banking was through (insecure) IIS servers.
Banking is a competitive business. If your current bank doesn't support your choice of browser and/or operating system, find one that does.
- Robin
Draksync and Unison are both included in Mandrake and will do this.
Unison is platform/OS agnostic, BTW.
- Robin
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I heard these lines when I was a kid in the 1950s/1960s, except they said "Mad Magazine" instead of "video games" back then. Every teacher and parent yelled about how comic books and Mad Magazine would rot our brains, and how we should read nothing but "real" books, blah blah, blah.
The funny thing is, all the major comics-reading kids I knew grew up to be major book-reading adults.
My first *pleasure* reading was comic books. I later graduated to "juvenile" science fiction, even later to adult fiction and non-fiction. And eventually I became a full-time, professional writer.
Comic books taught me something my school's reading material didn't: That reading can and should be fun. Once I learned that, I was off and running.
So go ahead. Keep telling kids that comics are bad so they learn to read for pleasure behind your back. There is nothing that makes a kid's joy sweeter than making sure he or she must defy adult authority to get it.
- Robin
PS - I still read a comic book now and then.
I used to run a limo company from my home, first in Baltimore County, MD, later in Howard County. Customers rarely came to my home; once in a while someone wanted to inspect my vehicle before they hired me for a special event like a wedding, but that was about it.
I had all appropriate licenses and took a home office deduction on my income taxes. The law in both jurisdictions said I could run a business from my home that didn't generate "excessive traffic or noise," which I didn't. So I was 100% legal.
Virtually every shareware developer I know works from home, no problem.
Many graphic artists work from home, no problem.
A majority of the people whose bylines you see on Slashdot work from home either all or most of the time.
Marty Roesch started SourceFire, the "commercialization of Snort" from his home. He was selling/shipping hardware, not just writing software, and he got away with it for a good while. (He has an office now - the business got too big for the house - his wife started getting upset at having boxes all over the kitchen and the sales manager working from a card table in the living room.)
A neighbor of mine across the street installs satellite TV dishes and works from home. Every week or two a large truck comes with a bunch of systems, and he and his son unload them, then the truck goes away. He's probably right on the edge of the law, but I'm not going to complain and neither is the president of the community association, who lives next to us -- and is a computer programmer who does a lot of work from home.
It depends on your neighbors and your relations with them more than anything, I think. If you have clients coming into a ritzy gated community via noisy helicopter 3 times a day, and you have a lot of workers who sit on your lawn and drink beer and get rowdy during breaks, you're going to have problems. If you're in a normal working class community and know your neighbors, and stay fairly quiet, hey! You're working! The worst thing that's likely to happen is that once they realize you're around all the time and that you know something about computers, they'll stop by a lot and ask you lots of Windows questions...
- Robin
In Mozilla (on Linux):
Click on "File," select "save page as" in the dropdown menu, decide which directory you want it in, and perhaps change the title from the default, which may be something like "article.pl" or "21CHEM.html," to something more informative for you.
Then click "save" and you've got that page's HTML and text (but not graphics, although the graphics may appear in the saved article if you're online IF the publication whose page you saved uses absolute rather than relative tags to produce images).
I often do this with news pages I think may be useful to me in the future. Many newspaper sites give you recent articles free, but charge for archived ones. If you think you're going to need the information in, say, a NY Times article a month from now, save it today!
- Robin