I especially got a Nokia 8390 because it was small, lightweight and had a normal LCD screen non color.
I dislike color screens because they drain the battery too fast and 99.99% of the time I use my cell phone for -duh- calling people, not for sending pictures.
Take job that's related to your field. Any job. No matter how low the salary.
I have been on the hiring end several times, and let me tell you that nothing looks worse on your resume than not working for a significant length of time, even if you're busy working on getting more certifications.
If you can't find employment in your field, then start your own company and offer on-site network support for local businesses at a very low price. It might not earn you a lot of money, but you'll be gaining credibility as a self-directed, self-motivated go-getter and IMHO that's worth more in your resume then just piling up certifications.
Just a reminder of why the confirmation that there is water (frozen or otherwise) is an important milestone in the quest for establishing a base on Mars:
Water provides vital ingredients that are needed to sustain (human) life on Mars, ingredients that would be too costly to import from Earth using cargo ships:
Hydrogen (power source)
Oxygen (for breathing)
Water (for drinking)
The only thing left is to build some sort of biodome having an atmosphere in which vegetables
and fruits could be produced (food).
We're all probably be dead before all this happens, but it's still an interesting endeavour scientifically speaking.
It baffles me why they don't just try to build a base like that at the bottom of the oceans, here on Earth. I guess it would not capture the taxpayers imagination enough for the politicians to give serious funding to such an endeavour. Oh well.
Say I want to start up a new company with two of my friends (all Java developers), and let's suppose we want to innovate and build the next killer app. First we need to write a proof of concept in order to show it to venture capitalists in order to secure an initial round of funding for the project; we need development tools, an application server, etc. but we're living off a shoestring budget.
Sun proposes a full suite of enterprise apps and development tools including limited support for 300$ per year? Wow, I'll jump on this offer, thank you very much. And when we'll sell the solution to our customers, we'll be happy to sell it along with some Sun hardware to match.
Lotus 123 had copied the look and feel and
it worked like Visicalc.
The case went to court, and Lotus won, thereby
setting jurisprudence on the matter. Ever since,
we've been able to replicate the look and feel and
functionality of a particular piece of software
without fear of legal action. The only thing
that's off limits is reverse engineering the code
or actually cut-and pasting the original code to
the clone.
So I sleep sound at night. Don't let the turkeys
(SCO) bug you down. Let them drown in their own
drool.
My boss allows me to work from home on Mondays and Fridays. I avoid a long, stressful commute to work, and I save 40% on gasoline. Overall my productivity has increased, and I feel better.
In Montreal there is currently a big push from the big "shell" companies to move all independent contractors to employee status within their company.
It's a heavy trend, and independent contractors currently have the choice of accepting a permanent position with one of these few big names of face the real prospect of being out of work for several months. I know several highly skilled contractors who spent between 5 and 13 months at home with no income, slowly eating into their savings, until they found another contract.
The ugly part is that hourly rates for contractors are down 40-60% this year compared to 1999, and contractors switching to employee status face even bigger paycuts.
Personnally my contract ends at the end of May, and I have been offered to continue my current work as an employee instead of as a contractor, and I am being offered a whopping 66% reduction in my compensation. Still, I might stick with the job, it's better than no job at all.
This is compounded with a 4.6% inflation rate, and a 45% surge in housing prices in the last year, a 15% increase in real estate taxes, not to mention the effect that the stock market crash has had on my savings.
But for these shell companies, these are good times; for each open position they receive a few hundred resumes of skilled IT professionals who are currently unemployed and eager to accept the job, no matter how low the salary.
If you really care about your privacy, switch to a prepaid wireless phone. Of course its usage is more expensive than a traditional land line phone, but you never have to tell your name or address.
Also, since in the U.S. an invidual under 18 cannot be legally bound to a contract, the prepaid service is the only one available for teenagers, short of having their parents sign up for a postpaid service on their behalf.
As proposed, the submarine would constitute the single largest private undersea vehicle ever built, and arguably, the most significant personal transportation device of the 20th century.
A group of hackers who call themselves Slashdotters today successfully shut down the whole internet in Nigeria. The Nigerian head of information declined to comment, it is reported that he is still on hold with AOL tech support.
Your new president wants to increase developer
productivity. She probably doesn't care how
you guys do it.
I have tried several IDEs, and I still use emacs
most of the time, because that's what works best
for me. I have been a technical team leader on
several projects over the years, and along with
my teammates we've tried to settle on an IDE,
only to come to the conclusion that some guys
are happy and productive with JBuilder, and
others are more comfortable with Visual Age, and
some others are happiest with Textpad or
UltraEdit.
I have found no correlation whatsoever between
the most productive developers and the tools
they use. I've seen code of coutstanding quality
written using TextPad, and I've seen horrible
code that was written using JBuilder (and
vice-versa).
So I've come to agree with Henri Fayol's
philosophy. Henri Fayol (1841-1925) has been
one of the most influential figures in modern
management.
Fayol's philosophy applied to computer science
would state that developers are much more than
just coders, and in order to increase
productivity, administrators should just give
them the freedom to choose their tools and
provide them with an environment where they will
be able to exploit their full potential.
The most productive developers that I've worked
with are the ones who do something right the first
time around. The first thing these guys do is
think the problem over and plan things out instead
of heading straight to a coding binge. And they
take the time necessary to write good quality code
(commented, formatted, toroughly tested, etc.).
These guys take 25% longer than others to write
their code, but they save lots of code
refactoring and debugging time over the long run.
In many Fortune 1000 companies, acquiring closed
source software means having to justify the
expense, get the expense approved and then the
purchase has to go through many layers of red
tape before you can actually use the software you
requested. This leads to delays and cost
overruns.
With open source software you just download it
and use it immediately. No bureaucracy, no
delays.
Of course, you have to pay someone to install it,
configure it and possibly integrate it to suit your business needs, but that usually gets done
by some consultant whom the company had already
contracted for the duration of the project anyway,
so you don't need to have an additional expense
approved; you save yourself the time and
aggravation of navigating through the bureaucracy
and get the job done faster.
I worked for two years on a project in New York
city that was trying to hold makket data using
an O2 database. My experience has been that:
The accounting people who wanted to generate
reports using the tools they were used to
(Crystal Reports, Excel, etc.) needed instead
to ask the IS department to write programs that
would generate flat files (rows and columns) so
that the complex, non-tabular OO data could be
brought back to tabular data for reporting
purposes. Hell it would have been simpler and
cheaper to have had the data in an RDBMS in the
first place!
Another problem was that changes to the schema
routinely broke all of our apps. Performance
was abysmal, and hiring people who had even
heard about the O2 database was impossible.
After two years the project was canned.
Remember, it's a lot cheaper to make programmers
map JDBC ResultSet to objects than it is to have
them map OO data back to tabular format for
reporting purposes. Your database is worth
nothing if it does not support the needs of the
business. The ability to be able to perform
ad-hoc queries or to load a table in Excel is
a must have for most enterprises.
Slashdot Mirror
Can we just settle for GNU/SCO/Linux :)
I dislike color screens because they drain the battery too fast and 99.99% of the time I use my cell phone for -duh- calling people, not for sending pictures.
Now if it could only play 8 track cartridges :)
Take job that's related to your field. Any job. No matter how low the salary.
I have been on the hiring end several times, and let me tell you that nothing looks worse on your resume than not working for a significant length of time, even if you're busy working on getting more certifications.
If you can't find employment in your field, then start your own company and offer on-site network support for local businesses at a very low price. It might not earn you a lot of money, but you'll be gaining credibility as a self-directed, self-motivated go-getter and IMHO that's worth more in your resume then just piling up certifications.
Good Luck.
Just a reminder of why the confirmation that there is water (frozen or otherwise) is an important milestone in the quest for establishing a base on Mars:
Water provides vital ingredients that are needed to sustain (human) life on Mars, ingredients that would be too costly to import from Earth using cargo ships:
The only thing left is to build some sort of biodome having an atmosphere in which vegetables and fruits could be produced (food).
We're all probably be dead before all this happens, but it's still an interesting endeavour scientifically speaking.
It baffles me why they don't just try to build a base like that at the bottom of the oceans, here on Earth. I guess it would not capture the taxpayers imagination enough for the politicians to give serious funding to such an endeavour. Oh well.
Unfortunately NASA is sending XML/SOAP messages...
Is this yet another scheme from Scott McNealy?
Well I know of several electric cars that go faster, provided they are dropped from an airplane.
Say I want to start up a new company with two of my friends (all Java developers), and let's suppose we want to innovate and build the next killer app. First we need to write a proof of concept in order to show it to venture capitalists in order to secure an initial round of funding for the project; we need development tools, an application server, etc. but we're living off a shoestring budget.
Sun proposes a full suite of enterprise apps and development tools including limited support for 300$ per year? Wow, I'll jump on this offer, thank you very much. And when we'll sell the solution to our customers, we'll be happy to sell it along with some Sun hardware to match.
You mean the bride is actually a he?
Lotus 123 had copied the look and feel and it worked like Visicalc.
The case went to court, and Lotus won, thereby setting jurisprudence on the matter. Ever since, we've been able to replicate the look and feel and functionality of a particular piece of software without fear of legal action. The only thing that's off limits is reverse engineering the code or actually cut-and pasting the original code to the clone.
So I sleep sound at night. Don't let the turkeys (SCO) bug you down. Let them drown in their own drool.
If the IP headers were jumping, couln't we set the Evil Knievel bit?
I bet we can this one trhough the U.S. patent office :)
My boss allows me to work from home on Mondays and Fridays. I avoid a long, stressful commute to work, and I save 40% on gasoline. Overall my productivity has increased, and I feel better.
the big "shell" companies to move all independent
contractors to employee status within their company.
It's a heavy trend, and independent contractors
currently have the choice of accepting a
permanent position with one of these few big
names of face the real prospect of being out of
work for several months. I know several
highly skilled contractors who spent between
5 and 13 months at home with no income, slowly
eating into their savings, until they found
another contract.
The ugly part is that hourly rates for
contractors are down 40-60% this year compared
to 1999, and contractors switching to employee
status face even bigger paycuts.
Personnally my contract ends at the end of May,
and I have been offered to continue my current
work as an employee instead of as a contractor,
and I am being offered a whopping 66% reduction
in my compensation. Still, I might stick with
the job, it's better than no job at all.
This is compounded with a 4.6% inflation rate,
and a 45% surge in housing prices in the last
year, a 15% increase in real estate taxes, not
to mention the effect that the stock market
crash has had on my savings.
But for these shell companies, these are good
times; for each open position they receive
a few hundred resumes of skilled IT
professionals who are currently unemployed
and eager to accept the job, no matter how
low the salary.
I gotta book one of these vacation packages to :)
:)
Microsoft's own Epcot Center! Currently offered
in the travel section of MSN.com
--
BTW thanks Microsoft for making me laugh
Right. Let's install gigantic pinball flippers :)
on the poles
a prepaid wireless phone. Of course its usage is
more expensive than a traditional land line phone,
but you never have to tell your name or address.
Also, since in the U.S. an invidual under 18 cannot
be legally bound to a contract, the prepaid service
is the only one available for teenagers, short of
having their parents sign up for a postpaid service
on their behalf.
As proposed, the submarine would constitute the single largest private undersea vehicle ever built, and arguably, the most significant personal transportation device of the 20th century.
Oh, I thought this was the 21st century.
A group of hackers who call themselves
Slashdotters today successfully shut down the
whole internet in Nigeria. The Nigerian head
of information declined to comment, it is reported
that he is still on hold with AOL tech support.
Your new president wants to increase developer productivity. She probably doesn't care how you guys do it.
I have tried several IDEs, and I still use emacs most of the time, because that's what works best for me. I have been a technical team leader on several projects over the years, and along with my teammates we've tried to settle on an IDE, only to come to the conclusion that some guys are happy and productive with JBuilder, and others are more comfortable with Visual Age, and some others are happiest with Textpad or UltraEdit.
I have found no correlation whatsoever between the most productive developers and the tools they use. I've seen code of coutstanding quality written using TextPad, and I've seen horrible code that was written using JBuilder (and vice-versa).
So I've come to agree with Henri Fayol's philosophy. Henri Fayol (1841-1925) has been one of the most influential figures in modern management.
Fayol's philosophy applied to computer science would state that developers are much more than just coders, and in order to increase productivity, administrators should just give them the freedom to choose their tools and provide them with an environment where they will be able to exploit their full potential.
The most productive developers that I've worked with are the ones who do something right the first time around. The first thing these guys do is think the problem over and plan things out instead of heading straight to a coding binge. And they take the time necessary to write good quality code (commented, formatted, toroughly tested, etc.). These guys take 25% longer than others to write their code, but they save lots of code refactoring and debugging time over the long run.
I wish you the best of luck in your endeavour.
Pascal Forget
Montreal, Canada
Surely you mean LSD/Windows!
With open source software you just download it and use it immediately. No bureaucracy, no delays. Of course, you have to pay someone to install it, configure it and possibly integrate it to suit your business needs, but that usually gets done by some consultant whom the company had already contracted for the duration of the project anyway, so you don't need to have an additional expense approved; you save yourself the time and aggravation of navigating through the bureaucracy and get the job done faster.
Try it, your deadlines will love it!
I worked for two years on a project in New York city that was trying to hold makket data using an O2 database. My experience has been that: The accounting people who wanted to generate reports using the tools they were used to (Crystal Reports, Excel, etc.) needed instead to ask the IS department to write programs that would generate flat files (rows and columns) so that the complex, non-tabular OO data could be brought back to tabular data for reporting purposes. Hell it would have been simpler and cheaper to have had the data in an RDBMS in the first place! Another problem was that changes to the schema routinely broke all of our apps. Performance was abysmal, and hiring people who had even heard about the O2 database was impossible. After two years the project was canned. Remember, it's a lot cheaper to make programmers map JDBC ResultSet to objects than it is to have them map OO data back to tabular format for reporting purposes. Your database is worth nothing if it does not support the needs of the business. The ability to be able to perform ad-hoc queries or to load a table in Excel is a must have for most enterprises.