I've wanted for years to hook up with a VC firm / incubator and provide this.
Your alternative is to find one good developer and hire everyone he wants to work with. If you came to me with big bags of cash, I could get you a team of 5 good developers that have worked together before. But you'd have to lure them away from mostly secure positions with stable companies. That takes cash nowadays, not just equity positions.
So what? What are the changes you keep going back to a book you already finished anyway? You should give away books after you finish them,.. somebody else might enjoy it.
If the service allows you to go back it actually good for the auther -- he/she has another opportunity to convince you buy that next episode of the series.
The biggest productivity gain I ever got working with my Linux boxes was when I put an OpenBSD gateway/firewall between the Linux boxes and the internet. Trollish, but serious.
Screen's great. I've used it for 15 years or so. I currently use it, like the author said, to save my terminal session between connections. I never lose my place when I have to reconnect, whether it's because my network flaked out, my wifi connection dropped, the VPN tunnel dropped, my laptop battery died, I went home for the night, etc.
Screen has some newer features like the ability to have multiple sessions connected to one screen session, so you can have more than one person watching (or working in) a shell session.
Screen also gives you scroll-back capabilities, even when it's disconnected.
Screen also used to be really useful for working on a messed-up terminal where the termcap wasn't quite right. Screen emulates a vt100 (or something from that family) and could render a decent vi, nethack, etc. session on an otherwise unworkable terminal. Not such a big deal today.
I was stunned to find out that my company is bought some commercial on-site training from an open-source author. Even more stunning is that our VP of Development didn't need any extended begging and pleading.
When I can, like a lot of developers I read Dr. Dobbs, C (/C++) User's Journal, Java Developers Journal (JDJ), and some.NET junk.
But honestly, I get a lot more value career-wise out of reading trade magazines in the verticals I work in. Utility companies, retail stores, financial companies, etc. Knowing even a small amount about their business goes a long way to understanding their problems and being able to communicate with them.
I went out with a church group a week after Hurricane Charley last year.
We spent most of our time cutting up fallen trees. We pretty much destroyed every "homeowner" chainsaw in a few hours. Don't even bother bringing those. The only ones that made it were commercial Stihl ones. The same with any handsaws, axes, etc. It's just too hot to do that sort of physical work. There was a huge amount of work and we could have used almost one chainsaw per person.
On the other hand, if you're going to have people inexperienced with chainsaws, bring some trauma dessings. Dead serious. I saw a lot of very close calls and chainsaws are a huge cause of post-storm injuries. Spend some time up-front and really go over chainsaw safety and technique. A lot of the close calls came because of someone getting a saw stuck and doing crazy things to try to free it.
What we learned was to focus on just cutting trees that could make a difference. Don't burn out clearing all the debris out of a few yards. There'll be time for that later. Just clear their driveway, electrical feed, any trees right next to the house, anything on a car or building, etc. I was amazed that one and two weeks later there were still people with their car trapped under or behind a fallen tree.
We also used plastic sheeting and roofing nails to do temporary roofing repairs. Ladders, hammers, etc. If you can get plywood, tar paper, etc., you could do more permanent work, but you'll run into problems as unlicense contractors.
We brought a lot of water to hand out, but there were very few takers. Everywhere we went had plenty of water. Everyone could have used more ice and coolers (even the cheap styrofoam disposables). Anything you can bring to occupy children will be welcome. The church we base-camped at had sort of a hurricane relief festival going on all weekend. Food vendors (free), donated clothing and supplies, children games, chainsaw sharpening and repair (free), etc. It was very well received.
Sleeping in a hurricane zone is rough. No way around it. A generator and an oscillating fan help a lot. Any sort of shower system would help.
A thing that was in short supply was reliable information. Find out where the local resources are and spread the word.
You need to make sure that your volunteers are insured. Any real volunteer organization will carry workman's comp for their volunteers. If you're going with Southern Baptist, United Methodist Committee on Relief, Salvation Army, etc. make sure you're covered.
They are not--and will not--be available for purchase by individuals.
Why not? That only makes sense if they subsidize the production costs. Otherwise let a U.S. distributor sell them for $129.
1) Lack of an easy cheap / free development environment. If there had been "VB for PalmOS", the software market would have been 100 times what it was (and it wasn't tiny).
2) Poor planning in the SDK OS and APIs. Every new hardware feature meaned grafting on clumsy APIs. If they'd planned for hires, color and real sound from the beginning, it would have been easier. It's also hard to get a Palm app running on even just the current hardware variations.
3) Doesn't play well with Windows. I love how easy the Palm can handle contacts via VCF files. I can beam one to and from Windows or a PocketPC and it works. But it's impossible to beam a calendar appointment or todo item. Memos work as small text files. A basic Word and Excel viewer seems so critical that every Palm seems to bundle 3rd party apps for it.
4) Unstable / unrecoverable. If you don't hotsync regularly, you will lose your data. Even if you do, you'll lose something that hotsync doesn't handle properly. If it wasn't for Backup Buddy VFS doing scheduled nightly backups to the SD card, I would have lost a lot of data several times now.
5) Poor support for external memory. The VFS support for flash cards was slow coming and it's very difficult for the average user to get apps to run from the card or even just with their data on the card. If it weren't for ZLauncher and a lot of fiddling, I wouldn't have 80% of my apps on my Palm.
6) Just too "fiddly". I love my Palm Zire71, but it's only because I'm an elite hard-core geek and spent time getting it right with a bunch of 3rd party apps. My Palm's loaded with ebooks, mp3s, a DVD-length video for my kid, maps for half the state, 6 bible translations, family photos, a ton of games, ir remote control, alarm clock, etc. It's about as much of a computer as I can use without a net connection. I can't imagine business travel without it. But even among all the techies I know, nobody else with a Palm does 1/4th of that with it. They just don't have time to make it work.
A/UX made an acceptable color X terminal. 640x480 was little small, but worked at the time. Plus it was so full of security holes and hard to physically secure the box against reboot that it was practically like having no root password at all.
How is your company responding to the current situation?
Because of complaints about the high cost of gas, the CEO asked my manager to draft a work-from-home policy. He's a butt-in-seat manager that doesn't trust anyone. His new policy? You can work from home for a maximum of half of the day.
It's been a few years since I worked with them, but when I did, the Panasonic was not as well sealed as the Itronix. Unless things have changed, I'd be more worried about sand and water getting into the Panasonic.
Hammerhead tablets are probably the best sealed I've seen.
My base salary is $92k. I'm a cross-platform C++ developer that also has a Java and web development background. I work pretty much 40 hours a week most of the time and almost never travel.
Slashdot Mirror
I've wanted for years to hook up with a VC firm / incubator and provide this.
Your alternative is to find one good developer and hire everyone he wants to work with. If you came to me with big bags of cash, I could get you a team of 5 good developers that have worked together before. But you'd have to lure them away from mostly secure positions with stable companies. That takes cash nowadays, not just equity positions.
Pen and paper sketches, then some quick Photoshop mockups which eventually morph into a look which gets hacked up for a DHTML prototype.
Chaulk up another token geezer that remembers when aol.com addresses first started to appear.
Cross platform as long as it's Windows or *nix. How about zSeries, iSeries, HP NonStop, etc.
I cleaned up my book collection the other day...
Maybe you should have held on to that dictionary.
The biggest productivity gain I ever got working with my Linux boxes was when I put an OpenBSD gateway/firewall between the Linux boxes and the internet. Trollish, but serious.
I'd put PuTTY way before telnet. A quick download or copy from a USB key and I can ssh into a machine from any Windows box.
Screen's great. I've used it for 15 years or so. I currently use it, like the author said, to save my terminal session between connections. I never lose my place when I have to reconnect, whether it's because my network flaked out, my wifi connection dropped, the VPN tunnel dropped, my laptop battery died, I went home for the night, etc.
Screen has some newer features like the ability to have multiple sessions connected to one screen session, so you can have more than one person watching (or working in) a shell session.
Screen also gives you scroll-back capabilities, even when it's disconnected.
Screen also used to be really useful for working on a messed-up terminal where the termcap wasn't quite right. Screen emulates a vt100 (or something from that family) and could render a decent vi, nethack, etc. session on an otherwise unworkable terminal. Not such a big deal today.
Slashdot is great for history fans. You get to read last week's news today.
I was stunned to find out that my company is bought some commercial on-site training from an open-source author. Even more stunning is that our VP of Development didn't need any extended begging and pleading.
When I can, like a lot of developers I read Dr. Dobbs, C (/C++) User's Journal, Java Developers Journal (JDJ), and some .NET junk.
But honestly, I get a lot more value career-wise out of reading trade magazines in the verticals I work in. Utility companies, retail stores, financial companies, etc. Knowing even a small amount about their business goes a long way to understanding their problems and being able to communicate with them.
Whatever.
If you want to evangelize to the hurricane victims, shut up. Help them. Then ask if you can pray for them. Listen to them. That's it.
I went out with a church group a week after Hurricane Charley last year.
We spent most of our time cutting up fallen trees. We pretty much destroyed every "homeowner" chainsaw in a few hours. Don't even bother bringing those. The only ones that made it were commercial Stihl ones. The same with any handsaws, axes, etc. It's just too hot to do that sort of physical work. There was a huge amount of work and we could have used almost one chainsaw per person.
On the other hand, if you're going to have people inexperienced with chainsaws, bring some trauma dessings. Dead serious. I saw a lot of very close calls and chainsaws are a huge cause of post-storm injuries. Spend some time up-front and really go over chainsaw safety and technique. A lot of the close calls came because of someone getting a saw stuck and doing crazy things to try to free it.
What we learned was to focus on just cutting trees that could make a difference. Don't burn out clearing all the debris out of a few yards. There'll be time for that later. Just clear their driveway, electrical feed, any trees right next to the house, anything on a car or building, etc. I was amazed that one and two weeks later there were still people with their car trapped under or behind a fallen tree.
We also used plastic sheeting and roofing nails to do temporary roofing repairs. Ladders, hammers, etc. If you can get plywood, tar paper, etc., you could do more permanent work, but you'll run into problems as unlicense contractors.
We brought a lot of water to hand out, but there were very few takers. Everywhere we went had plenty of water. Everyone could have used more ice and coolers (even the cheap styrofoam disposables). Anything you can bring to occupy children will be welcome. The church we base-camped at had sort of a hurricane relief festival going on all weekend. Food vendors (free), donated clothing and supplies, children games, chainsaw sharpening and repair (free), etc. It was very well received.
Sleeping in a hurricane zone is rough. No way around it. A generator and an oscillating fan help a lot. Any sort of shower system would help.
A thing that was in short supply was reliable information. Find out where the local resources are and spread the word.
You need to make sure that your volunteers are insured. Any real volunteer organization will carry workman's comp for their volunteers. If you're going with Southern Baptist, United Methodist Committee on Relief, Salvation Army, etc. make sure you're covered.
They are not--and will not--be available for purchase by individuals. Why not? That only makes sense if they subsidize the production costs. Otherwise let a U.S. distributor sell them for $129.
Gas prices. Don't forget gas prices.
1) Lack of an easy cheap / free development environment. If there had been "VB for PalmOS", the software market would have been 100 times what it was (and it wasn't tiny).
2) Poor planning in the SDK OS and APIs. Every new hardware feature meaned grafting on clumsy APIs. If they'd planned for hires, color and real sound from the beginning, it would have been easier. It's also hard to get a Palm app running on even just the current hardware variations.
3) Doesn't play well with Windows. I love how easy the Palm can handle contacts via VCF files. I can beam one to and from Windows or a PocketPC and it works. But it's impossible to beam a calendar appointment or todo item. Memos work as small text files. A basic Word and Excel viewer seems so critical that every Palm seems to bundle 3rd party apps for it.
4) Unstable / unrecoverable. If you don't hotsync regularly, you will lose your data. Even if you do, you'll lose something that hotsync doesn't handle properly. If it wasn't for Backup Buddy VFS doing scheduled nightly backups to the SD card, I would have lost a lot of data several times now.
5) Poor support for external memory. The VFS support for flash cards was slow coming and it's very difficult for the average user to get apps to run from the card or even just with their data on the card. If it weren't for ZLauncher and a lot of fiddling, I wouldn't have 80% of my apps on my Palm.
6) Just too "fiddly". I love my Palm Zire71, but it's only because I'm an elite hard-core geek and spent time getting it right with a bunch of 3rd party apps. My Palm's loaded with ebooks, mp3s, a DVD-length video for my kid, maps for half the state, 6 bible translations, family photos, a ton of games, ir remote control, alarm clock, etc. It's about as much of a computer as I can use without a net connection. I can't imagine business travel without it. But even among all the techies I know, nobody else with a Palm does 1/4th of that with it. They just don't have time to make it work.
A/UX made an acceptable color X terminal. 640x480 was little small, but worked at the time. Plus it was so full of security holes and hard to physically secure the box against reboot that it was practically like having no root password at all.
Put your bed up on blocks to get another foot or so of height for more storage.
Because of complaints about the high cost of gas, the CEO asked my manager to draft a work-from-home policy. He's a butt-in-seat manager that doesn't trust anyone. His new policy? You can work from home for a maximum of half of the day.
I had a similar experience. Now my daughter shrieks whenever she sees a bathtub or even chocolate.
My HP LaserJet 4MP is 13 years old. It's not fast, but it's been rock-solid. Really considering a color laser now though.
My Canon LIDE died after 3 months.
It's been a few years since I worked with them, but when I did, the Panasonic was not as well sealed as the Itronix. Unless things have changed, I'd be more worried about sand and water getting into the Panasonic. Hammerhead tablets are probably the best sealed I've seen.
My base salary is $92k. I'm a cross-platform C++ developer that also has a Java and web development background. I work pretty much 40 hours a week most of the time and almost never travel.
Yes, I know I'm overpaid.
CompuServe GIF, 320x200 256 color VGA displays, uudecode, and alt.binaries.pictures.erotica. 300 floppies of 100dpi 256 color porn.