Ritalin. Does the trick for me. I started taking it at about 40 yo and it made a world of difference in my ability to pay attention to things; and therefore, to hold jobs much much better.
In about 1985, at TI somebody brought in one of the first Macs and we got to play with it. It was different from everything on the market, not counting the old Xerox Star which was probably not still around at that point. The Mac was the first computer that was actually a personal computer and not a minimalist mainframe. Circumstances left me on the PC side of things, but it was clear they were following what was going on over there. There was more to it than that, but - good job, Steve. I wish you'd had 30 more years.
Richer cousin. Bipolar disorder correlates positively with income, social class, and creativity (although yes, it can derail your life too).
Found this and a line from the Merck manual as references. There are many more, but no time to look just now--I am at work.
Cards, paper, highlighters, a whiteboard, a floor
on
Documentation Strategies?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
3 x 5 notecards are good because you can lay them out on the floor. Or you can use sheets of paper. During my many years as a technical writer I spent a lot of time looking at a floor-ful of papers. It's easy to slide them around, too.
Use color if possible. Get a bunch of highlighters.
A big whiteboard is good as well.
These ideas boil down to using real space to simulate conceptual space. The conceptual space occupied by a manual or any sort of documentation is a lot bigger than a screen or a page. Visualize the whole thing first, including overview, basic concepts, approach, etc., then the sections, then the subsections, finally the details.
--C. Crowley
Most of us work with 2 hands in the real world
on
Two-Fisted Computing
·
· Score: 1
I've been waiting for a 2-mouse system for many years. Pick up this text here with one, this text here with the other, and swap them--operations like that.
Operating with just one mouse has always made me feel like a bird using its beak to weave a nest. Birds can do a lot of manipulation with a single pointy beak. They can build pretty fantastic nests. But who wants to do projects that way if they don't have to?
We work with both hands at once all the time in 3D space. Why not on-screen too?
C. Crowley--Mouse user since 1980 (and that first one had about 12 sharp little buttons on it)
You might look for wireless ISPs in your new or prospective location. Most WISPs are very small companies, so you'd probably get a chance to do some of everything--network admin, programming, tech support--not to mention tower climbs in snowstorms. Read up about this new and absolutely fascinating industry (to me anyway, since I work at a WISP) at the Broadband Reports WISP professionals' forum. --C. Crowley, Wiacomm, Inc.
See also the Glass Center at the 1939 World's Fair. The house of the future would be light inside because glass bricks would take the place of brick which would of course be totally obsolete by the year 2000.
Wireless Internet service providers, such as the one I work for (Wiacomm, serving parts of North Texas), provide high-speed Internet to areas with no cable or DSL service. Several things distinguish WISPs from satellite: Generally it costs less, it's usually run by someone local, the lag is much smaller because the signal is going a few miles away, not to geosynchronous orbit, and. . . Wireless Internet works during bad weather!
Congratulations! Sounds like you are moving up. This phenomenon happens in lots of areas of activity, not just gaming.
You have the urge to be proactive, not reactive. To produce rather than consume.
You don't have to totally give up $EARLIER_STUFF when you move on up to $NEW_STUFF. That's a common but erroneous belief. You're just adding some more activities that are way more satisfying to you as you are now, with your increased capacity for thinking, etc.
Do not fear that you are getting dull as you get older. Which is sharper, the mind that sees a game and says "Cool!" or the mind that conceptualizes it in the first place?
Any change like this generally requires some re-thinking of how you define yourself, but I think you'll like the new definition better.
MIXAL, MIX assembly language. MIX was the virtual machine I learned assembly on in 1975. Googling reveals that MIX was, in fact, the Knuth virtual computer. The book came with a little cue card with a picture of Tom Mix on it. MIX has 1 K of memory. Amazing what can be done in 1 K.
Y'all should look into Alvarion's 5.8 MHz NLOS system. Bounces right over hills using OFDM, which in itself is a very cool new radio technology. If you're in mountainous country it might be just the thing. You can read about it at the Alvarion site or the Alvarion-USA site.
Re, "I was wondering how you keep people from hooking into the wireless system without paying for a subscription?"
- We use proprietary Alvarion equipment which only talks to its own brand. The CPEs (customer premise units or subscriber units, SUs) are expensive and not readily available to consumers. As ObviousGuy speculated, the Alvarion system does have a receiver radio at the customer's house, which is authenticated by the AP, the central radio (in our setup). This does prevent roaming in the usual sense of the word. The technology is sometimes called fixed wireless for that reason. You can get a mobile unit, but for it to work the area has to be pretty saturated with coverage, more than is necessary to provide connectivity to most residences and businesses.
"Is there some device-specific authentication (based on MAC address or something)?"
- This is also possible.
"If so, does that mean that each computer in a customer's house needs to be subscribed separately?"
No, because the mac address of the router would work. Our subscribers (Wiacomm, Inc.--see post above) live for the most part in widely spaced exurban houses on 1 to 5 acre lots. It's possible that someone might piggyback on a subscriber's wireless router, but we do encourage them to change the password and use normal security precautions.
"How many wireless ISP schemes are there?"
- As many as you'd like to count! Read the mailing list archives at isp-wireless.com or Part 15 for more information on all aspects of the WISP industry.
"How do they let customers in and non-customers out?"
This is the big question. It's one reason we went with proprietary equipment instead of 802.11b.
The company I work for, Wiacomm, provides wireless Internet service in rural suburbs in Tarrant Co. and Parker Co. west of Fort Worth, Texas, and Kaufman Co. east of Dallas, Texas.
We use mostly Alvarion equipment and find it very satisfactory.
The equipment itself is solid (doesn't break often).
Speed is excellent, ranging up to 1.2 megabits with most subscribers toward the high end.
Alvarion engineers provide first-class support on the mailing list.
Most important, you can get a lot of data from the equipment via telnet or Alvarion's gui "BreezeCONFIG Access" program. We run it on Windows 2000. I don't know if it is available for Linux or UNIX.
Wiacomm's two big POPs and three of the smaller cells use 2.4 GHz access points, either standalone with omni or sector antennas, or the all-in-on cell extender (CX) units. Two more POPs use a different wireless system, Cirronet Wavebolt.
Two POPs are in wooded small towns, Crandall, TX, and Combine, TX. There we installed 900 MHz APs. I believe these are CXs. You can get CXs that go from one frequency range to another--e.g., input 2.4 GHz, output 900 MHz. However, for the one in Combine and a new, not yet functional AP in Rosser, TX, we use a set of 5.8 GHz Trango units for backhaul.
Speeds for the 900 MHz subscribers are comparable to the speeds the 2.4 GHz customers are getting--very fast!
A company associated with us, AEIWireless.Net, in Lakeside, TX, uses 5.8 Alvarion gear with OFDM capability. They are just getting started, so I can't report on their experience yet.
You can see maps of Wiacomm and AEIWireless coverage at the sites linked above. The maps do not indicate frequency range. Especially note the "detail map" of the Covered Bridge Canyon area. This clearly reveals the biggest drawback of line-of-sight frequencies such as 2.4 GHz of any sort. Hilly topography cuts your service area way down!
The downside of Alvarion equipment is price, but we think it's worth it. Keep in mind what you aren't paying in maintenance and support.
Security is also better with frequency-hopping systems. And, nobody's going to buy a $500 SU (subscriber unit) to go wardriving in the hopes that someone, somewhere, is set up with Alvarion.
The subscribers of the wireless ISP that I work for reach the monthly limit of 5 GB for three reasons:
Virus, worm, or trojan (malware).
File sharing software set up with default configuration (thereby becoming a server to the world, usually without knowing it).
Genuine heavy usage.
When we realize someone is using a ton of bandwidth, we give them a call and see if they know it. About 60% of the time, it has been an infected computer. We get them to run the Symantec cleanup tools, and suddenly their usage drops to invisibility like most other normal customers. Another ~40% have set up a music-swapping program and don't realize they are sending out files all the time. ONE customer turned out to be downloading music all the time. When he saw his usage stats, he upgraded his account to commercial level and everybody was happy.
Among normal users, even gamers and teenage kids whose usage is intermittently high don't reach the limit. Gamers run the graph up briefly, and a download of an ISO runs it up. These people know more or less what they're doing, and are not a problem. It's the clueless being used by outsiders that are the problem, in our experience.
In 1996 and 1997 I worked at StarText, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's online service, as a support tech. Our users were a cross-section of Fort Worth society.
Teachers, journalists (Dave Lieber excepted), lawyers, preachers, managers, and other members of the word-oriented professions usually resist computers. Many of these people, otherwise intelligent, fear technology. Fear leads to dislike or even hatred. Some react to a tech's instructions to click here or type a command as if they had been requested to dissect a possum off the highway.
I like to say this ultimately derives from the Greek philosophers' attitude toward the material world vs. the abstractions which were their stock in trade. But maybe not. Who knows?
At any rate, having started with no preconceptions, I soon learned to expect a tough time whenever I provided tech support to teachers.
Someone else, whose comment has disappeared, mentioned that tornadodevelopment.com is down. Another person said that the company now uses torsys.com and tems.com. These both redirect to xmsg.com, if you're curious about what the company actually produces. The xmsg faq does not include questions about email security nor about the politics of the McDanel case.
The owner of Tornado Development also owns a completely unrelated site. Excerpt: "Vintage Trends, Inc. was created to be the leading web-based distributor of vintage, military, recycled and designer clothing and accessories....Advanced technology and security encryption standards create a highly organized, remarkably efficient and aesthetically pleasing format for fast, convenient and secure shopping."
You can read the McDanel appeal in HTML format here.
Not quite the same as you're looking for, but an interesting idea: Bookcrossing. From the site: "Do you like free books? How about free book clubs?. Well, the books our members leave in the wild are free... but it's the act of freeing books that points to the heart of BookCrossing. Book trading has never been more exciting, more serendipitous, than with BookCrossing. Our goal, simply, is to make the whole world a library. BookCrossing is a book exchange of infinite proportion, the first and only of its kind..."
Phoneme, a unit of sound in a word. From Dictionary.com: "The smallest phonetic unit in a language that is capable of conveying a distinction in meaning, as the m of mat and the b of bat in English. [... from Greek phnma, phnmat-, utterance, sound produced, from phnein, to produce a sound, from phn, sound, voice...]"
Accept no substitutes. Even shiny, spectacular, intense, emotionally appealing substitutes.
Learn some social skills while you have the chance. Middle school IS the United Nations/U.S. Senate and vice versa, so you might as well learn how to deal with them here.
Get summer jobs where you are in charge of somebody, kids at camp for instance, because in giving orders you'll learn the necessity of taking them and save yourself a LOT of trouble later.
Get Ritalin now.
Watch Star Trek so you'll know what everybody is talking about when you get to college.
..."I can fit tons of books on it...." Even an 8-meg Palm III can hold 10 or 12 full-size books depending on what else you've got on there and a 2-meg would be adequate, holding say 3 volumes, if you just used it for that.
And,..."I can read in bed..." A PDA is so light and convenient it'll spoil you for anything else. Read in bed, in line at the grocery, anywhere. The reading in bed feature is best, though--no more cramping your hand around a paperback to hold it open or wearing out your arm with a heavy hardback.
As for the old monochrome screen, it took a day or so to get used to, but by now I've read through a significant fraction of Project Gutenberg on that same green screen. So it's doable. William Morris would roll in his grave to see his typographical classics in CSpotRun, but at least they're available for a new generation of readers.
Slashdot Mirror
Ritalin. Does the trick for me. I started taking it at about 40 yo and it made a world of difference in my ability to pay attention to things; and therefore, to hold jobs much much better.
It's the result of fury.
In about 1985, at TI somebody brought in one of the first Macs and we got to play with it. It was different from everything on the market, not counting the old Xerox Star which was probably not still around at that point. The Mac was the first computer that was actually a personal computer and not a minimalist mainframe. Circumstances left me on the PC side of things, but it was clear they were following what was going on over there. There was more to it than that, but - good job, Steve. I wish you'd had 30 more years.
"[schizophrenia's] poorer cousin, manic depression"
Richer cousin. Bipolar disorder correlates positively with income, social class, and creativity (although yes, it can derail your life too).
Found this and a line from the Merck manual as references. There are many more, but no time to look just now--I am at work.
3 x 5 notecards are good because you can lay them out on the floor. Or you can use sheets of paper. During my many years as a technical writer I spent a lot of time looking at a floor-ful of papers. It's easy to slide them around, too.
Use color if possible. Get a bunch of highlighters.
A big whiteboard is good as well.
These ideas boil down to using real space to simulate conceptual space. The conceptual space occupied by a manual or any sort of documentation is a lot bigger than a screen or a page. Visualize the whole thing first, including overview, basic concepts, approach, etc., then the sections, then the subsections, finally the details.
--C. Crowley
I've been waiting for a 2-mouse system for many years. Pick up this text here with one, this text here with the other, and swap them--operations like that.
Operating with just one mouse has always made me feel like a bird using its beak to weave a nest. Birds can do a lot of manipulation with a single pointy beak. They can build pretty fantastic nests. But who wants to do projects that way if they don't have to?
We work with both hands at once all the time in 3D space. Why not on-screen too?
C. Crowley--Mouse user since 1980 (and that first one had about 12 sharp little buttons on it)
You might look for wireless ISPs in your new or prospective location. Most WISPs are very small companies, so you'd probably get a chance to do some of everything--network admin, programming, tech support--not to mention tower climbs in snowstorms. Read up about this new and absolutely fascinating industry (to me anyway, since I work at a WISP) at the Broadband Reports WISP professionals' forum. --C. Crowley, Wiacomm, Inc.
See also the Glass Center at the 1939 World's Fair. The house of the future would be light inside because glass bricks would take the place of brick which would of course be totally obsolete by the year 2000.
I'd even pay for a CD archive.
Lycos: You listening?
To find out more about wireless Internet:
- The WISP forum on Broadband Reports (an excellent resource for all kinds of fast Internet)
- The WISP users forum on BBR
- Directory of WISPs at Part-15.org
- Another nationwide directory of WISPs
- Alvarion's broadband wireless access site - some good information in their product descriptions and white papers
--C. Crowley, Wiacomm, Inc. "Wiacomm_CC" on BBRCongratulations! Sounds like you are moving up. This phenomenon happens in lots of areas of activity, not just gaming.
You have the urge to be proactive, not reactive. To produce rather than consume.
You don't have to totally give up $EARLIER_STUFF when you move on up to $NEW_STUFF. That's a common but erroneous belief. You're just adding some more activities that are way more satisfying to you as you are now, with your increased capacity for thinking, etc.
Do not fear that you are getting dull as you get older. Which is sharper, the mind that sees a game and says "Cool!" or the mind that conceptualizes it in the first place?
Any change like this generally requires some re-thinking of how you define yourself, but I think you'll like the new definition better.
MIXAL, MIX assembly language. MIX was the virtual machine I learned assembly on in 1975. Googling reveals that MIX was, in fact, the Knuth virtual computer. The book came with a little cue card with a picture of Tom Mix on it. MIX has 1 K of memory. Amazing what can be done in 1 K.
Y'all should look into Alvarion's 5.8 MHz NLOS system. Bounces right over hills using OFDM, which in itself is a very cool new radio technology. If you're in mountainous country it might be just the thing. You can read about it at the Alvarion site or the Alvarion-USA site.
Re, "I was wondering how you keep people from hooking into the wireless system without paying for a subscription?"
- We use proprietary Alvarion equipment which only talks to its own brand. The CPEs (customer premise units or subscriber units, SUs) are expensive and not readily available to consumers. As ObviousGuy speculated, the Alvarion system does have a receiver radio at the customer's house, which is authenticated by the AP, the central radio (in our setup). This does prevent roaming in the usual sense of the word. The technology is sometimes called fixed wireless for that reason. You can get a mobile unit, but for it to work the area has to be pretty saturated with coverage, more than is necessary to provide connectivity to most residences and businesses.
"Is there some device-specific authentication (based on MAC address or something)?"
- This is also possible.
"If so, does that mean that each computer in a customer's house needs to be subscribed separately?"
No, because the mac address of the router would work. Our subscribers (Wiacomm, Inc.--see post above) live for the most part in widely spaced exurban houses on 1 to 5 acre lots. It's possible that someone might piggyback on a subscriber's wireless router, but we do encourage them to change the password and use normal security precautions.
"How many wireless ISP schemes are there?"
- As many as you'd like to count! Read the mailing list archives at isp-wireless.com or Part 15 for more information on all aspects of the WISP industry.
"How do they let customers in and non-customers out?"
This is the big question. It's one reason we went with proprietary equipment instead of 802.11b.
We use mostly Alvarion equipment and find it very satisfactory.
- The equipment itself is solid (doesn't break often).
- Speed is excellent, ranging up to 1.2 megabits with most subscribers toward the high end.
- Alvarion engineers provide first-class support on the mailing list.
- Most important, you can get a lot of data from the equipment via telnet or Alvarion's gui "BreezeCONFIG Access" program. We run it on Windows 2000. I don't know if it is available for Linux or UNIX.
Wiacomm's two big POPs and three of the smaller cells use 2.4 GHz access points, either standalone with omni or sector antennas, or the all-in-on cell extender (CX) units. Two more POPs use a different wireless system, Cirronet Wavebolt.Two POPs are in wooded small towns, Crandall, TX, and Combine, TX. There we installed 900 MHz APs. I believe these are CXs. You can get CXs that go from one frequency range to another--e.g., input 2.4 GHz, output 900 MHz. However, for the one in Combine and a new, not yet functional AP in Rosser, TX, we use a set of 5.8 GHz Trango units for backhaul.
Speeds for the 900 MHz subscribers are comparable to the speeds the 2.4 GHz customers are getting--very fast!
A company associated with us, AEIWireless.Net, in Lakeside, TX, uses 5.8 Alvarion gear with OFDM capability. They are just getting started, so I can't report on their experience yet.
You can see maps of Wiacomm and AEIWireless coverage at the sites linked above. The maps do not indicate frequency range. Especially note the "detail map" of the Covered Bridge Canyon area. This clearly reveals the biggest drawback of line-of-sight frequencies such as 2.4 GHz of any sort. Hilly topography cuts your service area way down!
The downside of Alvarion equipment is price, but we think it's worth it. Keep in mind what you aren't paying in maintenance and support.
Security is also better with frequency-hopping systems. And, nobody's going to buy a $500 SU (subscriber unit) to go wardriving in the hopes that someone, somewhere, is set up with Alvarion.
"TVs in a kitchen"..."CD players for the kitchen"...GAHHHHH
Last year. After I got the Palm Zire 71 that will play them. Some Chinese classical music, but don't remember what.
- Virus, worm, or trojan (malware).
- File sharing software set up with default configuration (thereby becoming a server to the world, usually without knowing it).
- Genuine heavy usage.
When we realize someone is using a ton of bandwidth, we give them a call and see if they know it. About 60% of the time, it has been an infected computer. We get them to run the Symantec cleanup tools, and suddenly their usage drops to invisibility like most other normal customers. Another ~40% have set up a music-swapping program and don't realize they are sending out files all the time. ONE customer turned out to be downloading music all the time. When he saw his usage stats, he upgraded his account to commercial level and everybody was happy.Among normal users, even gamers and teenage kids whose usage is intermittently high don't reach the limit. Gamers run the graph up briefly, and a download of an ISO runs it up. These people know more or less what they're doing, and are not a problem. It's the clueless being used by outsiders that are the problem, in our experience.
In 1996 and 1997 I worked at StarText, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's online service, as a support tech. Our users were a cross-section of Fort Worth society.
Teachers, journalists (Dave Lieber excepted), lawyers, preachers, managers, and other members of the word-oriented professions usually resist computers. Many of these people, otherwise intelligent, fear technology. Fear leads to dislike or even hatred. Some react to a tech's instructions to click here or type a command as if they had been requested to dissect a possum off the highway.
I like to say this ultimately derives from the Greek philosophers' attitude toward the material world vs. the abstractions which were their stock in trade. But maybe not. Who knows?
At any rate, having started with no preconceptions, I soon learned to expect a tough time whenever I provided tech support to teachers.
Someone else, whose comment has disappeared, mentioned that tornadodevelopment.com is down. Another person said that the company now uses torsys.com and tems.com. These both redirect to xmsg.com, if you're curious about what the company actually produces. The xmsg faq does not include questions about email security nor about the politics of the McDanel case.
The owner of Tornado Development also owns a completely unrelated site. Excerpt: "Vintage Trends, Inc. was created to be the leading web-based distributor of vintage, military, recycled and designer clothing and accessories....Advanced technology and security encryption standards create a highly organized, remarkably efficient and aesthetically pleasing format for fast, convenient and secure shopping."
You can read the McDanel appeal in HTML format here.
I want the giant sloth back.
Not quite the same as you're looking for, but an interesting idea: Bookcrossing. From the site: "Do you like free books? How about free book clubs?. Well, the books our members leave in the wild are free... but it's the act of freeing books that points to the heart of BookCrossing. Book trading has never been more exciting, more serendipitous, than with BookCrossing. Our goal, simply, is to make the whole world a library. BookCrossing is a book exchange of infinite proportion, the first and only of its kind..."
Phoneme, a unit of sound in a word. From Dictionary.com: "The smallest phonetic unit in a language that is capable of conveying a distinction in meaning, as the m of mat and the b of bat in English. [... from Greek phnma, phnmat-, utterance, sound produced, from phnein, to produce a sound, from phn, sound, voice...]"
Related to "telephone," "phonics," etc.
Accept no substitutes. Even shiny, spectacular, intense, emotionally appealing substitutes.
Learn some social skills while you have the chance. Middle school IS the United Nations/U.S. Senate and vice versa, so you might as well learn how to deal with them here.
Get summer jobs where you are in charge of somebody, kids at camp for instance, because in giving orders you'll learn the necessity of taking them and save yourself a LOT of trouble later.
Get Ritalin now.
Watch Star Trek so you'll know what everybody is talking about when you get to college.
Learn to learn.
..."I can fit tons of books on it...." Even an 8-meg Palm III can hold 10 or 12 full-size books depending on what else you've got on there and a 2-meg would be adequate, holding say 3 volumes, if you just used it for that.
..."I can read in bed..." A PDA is so light and convenient it'll spoil you for anything else. Read in bed, in line at the grocery, anywhere. The reading in bed feature is best, though--no more cramping your hand around a paperback to hold it open or wearing out your arm with a heavy hardback.
And,
As for the old monochrome screen, it took a day or so to get used to, but by now I've read through a significant fraction of Project Gutenberg on that same green screen. So it's doable. William Morris would roll in his grave to see his typographical classics in CSpotRun, but at least they're available for a new generation of readers.