I just returned from a trip to the Netherlands and Belgium. On my trip, I was in the homes of friends and collegues. Out of the 14 homes I visited, 12 of them were MacOS users. Perhaps I just have smart friends?
When I was in college, I couldn't find a program that met my interests so I invented my own. I was lucky to find a supportive dean who also didn't like being put into boxes.
In my professional life, I've used my wide interests as a asset and not a liability. I show up at work as a "generalist" with certain specific skills. My employers/clients get usually get more than they expected out of the relationship.
Career hint: Always give them a little more than they expected.
While I've worked as a employee, (and may again, given the right opportunity) I've found that being a consultant allows me to move from project to project and avoid being bored.
The main thing is to believe in yourself, have as much fun as you can, treat people fairly, and have a great ride.
nee...I was thinking more of the openness of the society, the willingness of folks to rationally discuss politics, and of course, of the excellent beer.
First off, congratulations on being fortunate enough to live in the Netherlands. It is an admirable country. Your issue (wiring a neighborhood of 30 homes) is one that my community has struggled with. I live in a rural land cooperative in the Southern US with about 100 households. We also are interested in cooperative, environmentally sound solutions for internet bandwidth. (see an earlier slashdot article ).
After a lot of thinking, meeting, and planning, we decided that while we had the resources to install some sort of community network (we were looking at getting our own DSLAM and doing our our DSL installation), we didn't have a large enough subscriber base to enable us to keep such a network maintained.
Instead, we were agressive with the local cable franchise holder and are now starting to get broadband installed in our community. While having our own cable plant may have saved us a few dollars, we don't have the headaches of keeping a system up and running.
The one thing that we don't get with this approach is a private subnet for our community; something that many of us would like to have for all sorts of reasons. I've managed to get myself politically active on this issue and the next time our local cable franchise is up for renegotiation, private neighborhood subnets will be proposed and discussed.
When I go to the library, I always bring a Knoppix CD. I reboot the machine from the CD, surf the interent and deal with email.
When I leave, I usually either leave the CD on the table (it's marked" "boot me") or give it to another patron.
The idea is that I have no worries about getting infected from whatever is on the local computer, and by using my CD, I am not filling up the libraries hard drive with cache files or session logs.
I carry a cell phone when I travel in Europe for the same reason I have one here. It's a way for clients to contact me and without clients, I don't have a source of income. With incoming calls free, a euro SIM is very cost effective.
I travel (not as frequently as I would like) to Europe and have lately been taking a Motorola P7389 tri-band GSM phone on my travels. The phone, while not the latest model, works great. I purchased it, unlocked, on eBay for short money.
On my latest trip, I purchased a Vodaphone NL from the cell phone kiosk at Schipol airport (the Netherlands) for about 20 Euro. It came with a number that is good for at least a year, and included 5 euros of credit. To top up the service, I only had to go to any of a number of outlets wherever I was in Holland, or if I could read and write Nederlands a little better, could refill the service from the internet site. Oh yes; all incoming calls (including international ones) were free. The in-country rate was less than I pay for my contracted Alltel phone here in the states.
I had the same experience in Greece and Beligum with different carriers.
I like the GSM system because it doesn't because of the flexibility it offers. If my phone dies, I can simply remove the SIM card from it and put it in another phone. I haven't verified this, but heard while I was in Europe that the EU has mandated that all phones sold in EU countries are requried to be unlocked.
GSM is a standard throughout the world (except for the US, Iraq, Afganistan and I believe, Argentina). An excellent site for finding out about prepaid GSM services is http://www.prepaidgsm.net/,
Don't be fooled by "word phones" offered by various US carriers. These phones are locked tri-band phones that roam on European GSM networks, but which are charged at outrageous rates by the US company.
Actually the model which would benefit consumers the most would be to have one technology (can you say GSM?), one set of towers, and multiple phone companies providing similar services over the same infrastructure at whatever price they can get away with charging.
This isn't much different than the way the copper/fiber phone network runs now under the MFJ. Of course, from my perspective, the government should own the network but let the phone companies provide the service.
I saw Video Toaster demoed several times at various trade shows. I remember at least once at a MacWorld Expo. The demo goddess was a nice and funny woman named Kiki Stockhammer. She did a great demo and during the product's life, I (and a lot of other people) looked forward to seeing Kiki present.
In my old foggy memory, I seem to remember that the product had one short rebirth after being dormant for a bit.
-------------- On the road and seldom seen. Davie Brightbill
In my consulting practice, I am sometimes called upon to make recommendations to clients regarding potential IT staffers.
One client, a large advertising agency in South Florida, uses me from time to time as an recruiting consultant. They have some positions that require an IT pro with both MacOS and Windows capabilities. The candidates are screened by a recruiter. I'm given a list of 10 or so people to interview. I talk to everyone and give the agency a recommendation on who to hire.
I have a list of questions I've developed that I hope give me some sort of feeling for how well each candidate would do if hired. I usually ask about certifications. In the Windows world, I look at having an appropriate certification as having "stepped up" It doesn't mean that the candidate is any good at server administration, or that they have any experience at it, but it is an indication that the candidate is serious about her/his profession. Certification is just one of the metrics I use, and I've recommended one candidate who wasn't certified. So far I haven't had any candidates who have had any Apple certifications but I believe that will change soon.
My favorite potential application for this technology is short range voice communication between vehicles. The 100 yard range is about right. Let other drivers know you're about to pass them. Tell the trucker that he's dragging a chain. Politely ask the guy who's going 40MPH in the left hand lane to move to the geezer lane.
I'm a full time MacOS consultant (http://homepage.mac.com/macguys). My clients are mostly large organizations but I still have a handful of mom and pop's. Almost all of my large clients and about 2/3 of the small users have left Classic behind. For those that haven't, it's for one of two reasons:
1. Apps haven't been ported to OS X. Heck, I know of one factory in Georgia that is still running a Mac IIci because their production line depends on a nuBus card. A more typical example is a biomedical research lab where I do some Filemaker work. They have a few dozen computers including several servers. Two of them are stuck as OS 9 boxes waiting (impatiently) for the developers to step up.
2. Users are running old hardware. I won't recommend upgrading to OS X on anything slower than a G3/400 and that is marginal. "Gee Dave, I just bought that computer 5 years ago...you're telling me that I have to replace it if I'm going to upgarde?" If you're running legacy hardware, you're going to have to run legacy software. Keeping legacy software/hardware running often costs more , but at least you don't ahve to buy a new box.
I ran into the "wasting the wax when the machine power cycles" problem on a couple of Phasers. I called tech support who told us how to turn off power cycling and sent us a free box of ink for our trouble.
I've also noticed that albums have been removed from the system. I bought two songs off an album the first day. I went back yesterday to get another track and that album was not in the store.
I agree with the comments re: getting indie labels in the store. I'd also like to see a lot more of the real old stuff available.
One way for this to happen would be to bounce the signal off the moon. Earth-Moon-Earth is a proven technology that Amateur Radio folks (de KD4BTC) have been doing for years. Check out this article.
Nope..no coax in the community. However, Comcast stops about a mile or so down the road. They want us to pay for the cost of running cable in the community so that they can lease it back to us. I guess I just don't understand economics and the world of big business.
There is copper in the ground; all owend by Sprint. In my initial inquiries, they claimed to not be interested in working with us to a roll-our-own DSL system.
Yipes...this guy just won't stop. I don't know a single neighbor who is a member of the organization this guy is referring to. However, there are a couple of Lutherians down the road and recently a Quaker family moved in.
Actually, because of the georgraphy here, it really makes more sense to buy several T1s or fractional's and use a cluster approach. I'm very interested in the suggestions relating to ethernet over fiber.
The problem with wireless is that our homes are almost all tucked in to the trees. My house is surrounded by trees at least twice as tall as the house (please, please, no hurricaines). It is possible to do a point2point system by cutting tunnels in the tree cover, but it would require a repeater in almost every home in the community.
lol...I thnk you might have my bunch confused with some other wackos. We're a long way from Orlando in the other Florida.... but thanks for the after dinner chuckle.
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It has been reported that the FBI uses Darwin based MacOS machines internally, in part because of their out-of-the-box superior security.
I just returned from a trip to the Netherlands and Belgium. On my trip, I was in the homes of friends and collegues. Out of the 14 homes I visited, 12 of them were MacOS users. Perhaps I just have smart friends?
When I was in college, I couldn't find a program that met my interests so I invented my own. I was lucky to find a supportive dean who also didn't like being put into boxes.
In my professional life, I've used my wide interests as a asset and not a liability. I show up at work as a "generalist" with certain specific skills. My employers/clients get usually get more than they expected out of the relationship.
Career hint: Always give them a little more than they expected.
While I've worked as a employee, (and may again, given the right opportunity) I've found that being a consultant allows me to move from project to project and avoid being bored.
The main thing is to believe in yourself, have as much fun as you can, treat people fairly, and have a great ride.
nee...I was thinking more of the openness of the society, the willingness of folks to rationally discuss politics, and of course, of the excellent beer.
After a lot of thinking, meeting, and planning, we decided that while we had the resources to install some sort of community network (we were looking at getting our own DSLAM and doing our our DSL installation), we didn't have a large enough subscriber base to enable us to keep such a network maintained.
Instead, we were agressive with the local cable franchise holder and are now starting to get broadband installed in our community. While having our own cable plant may have saved us a few dollars, we don't have the headaches of keeping a system up and running.
The one thing that we don't get with this approach is a private subnet for our community; something that many of us would like to have for all sorts of reasons. I've managed to get myself politically active on this issue and the next time our local cable franchise is up for renegotiation, private neighborhood subnets will be proposed and discussed.
When I go to the library, I always bring a Knoppix CD. I reboot the machine from the CD, surf the interent and deal with email.
When I leave, I usually either leave the CD on the table (it's marked" "boot me") or give it to another patron.
The idea is that I have no worries about getting infected from whatever is on the local computer, and by using my CD, I am not filling up the libraries hard drive with cache files or session logs.
I carry a cell phone when I travel in Europe for the same reason I have one here. It's a way for clients to contact me and without clients, I don't have a source of income. With incoming calls free, a euro SIM is very cost effective.
That first line in the second paragraph should have read Vodaphone NL SIM card. There is a reason for the preview button.
I travel (not as frequently as I would like) to Europe and have lately been taking a Motorola P7389 tri-band GSM phone on my travels. The phone, while not the latest model, works great. I purchased it, unlocked, on eBay for short money.
On my latest trip, I purchased a Vodaphone NL from the cell phone kiosk at Schipol airport (the Netherlands) for about 20 Euro. It came with a number that is good for at least a year, and included 5 euros of credit. To top up the service, I only had to go to any of a number of outlets wherever I was in Holland, or if I could read and write Nederlands a little better, could refill the service from the internet site. Oh yes; all incoming calls (including international ones) were free. The in-country rate was less than I pay for my contracted Alltel phone here in the states.
I had the same experience in Greece and Beligum with different carriers.
I like the GSM system because it doesn't because of the flexibility it offers. If my phone dies, I can simply remove the SIM card from it and put it in another phone. I haven't verified this, but heard while I was in Europe that the EU has mandated that all phones sold in EU countries are requried to be unlocked.
GSM is a standard throughout the world (except for the US, Iraq, Afganistan and I believe, Argentina). An excellent site for finding out about prepaid GSM services is http://www.prepaidgsm.net/,
Don't be fooled by "word phones" offered by various US carriers. These phones are locked tri-band phones that roam on European GSM networks, but which are charged at outrageous rates by the US company.
I'm just proud that you're successful in the MacOS space.
Actually the model which would benefit consumers the most would be to have one technology (can you say GSM?), one set of towers, and multiple phone companies providing similar services over the same infrastructure at whatever price they can get away with charging.
This isn't much different than the way the copper/fiber phone network runs now under the MFJ. Of course, from my perspective, the government should own the network but let the phone companies provide the service.
Next project: federalizing the railroads.
My other sig is a non-ascii symbol.
I saw Video Toaster demoed several times at various trade shows. I remember at least once at a MacWorld Expo. The demo goddess was a nice and funny woman named Kiki Stockhammer. She did a great demo and during the product's life, I (and a lot of other people) looked forward to seeing Kiki present.
In my old foggy memory, I seem to remember that the product had one short rebirth after being dormant for a bit.
--------------
On the road and seldom seen.
Davie Brightbill
In my consulting practice, I am sometimes called upon to make recommendations to clients regarding potential IT staffers.
One client, a large advertising agency in South Florida, uses me from time to time as an recruiting consultant. They have some positions that require an IT pro with both MacOS and Windows capabilities. The candidates are screened by a recruiter. I'm given a list of 10 or so people to interview. I talk to everyone and give the agency a recommendation on who to hire.
I have a list of questions I've developed that I hope give me some sort of feeling for how well each candidate would do if hired. I usually ask about certifications. In the Windows world, I look at having an appropriate certification as having "stepped up" It doesn't mean that the candidate is any good at server administration, or that they have any experience at it, but it is an indication that the candidate is serious about her/his profession. Certification is just one of the metrics I use, and I've recommended one candidate who wasn't certified. So far I haven't had any candidates who have had any Apple certifications but I believe that will change soon.
My favorite potential application for this technology is short range voice communication between vehicles. The 100 yard range is about right. Let other drivers know you're about to pass them. Tell the trucker that he's dragging a chain. Politely ask the guy who's going 40MPH in the left hand lane to move to the geezer lane.
I'm a full time MacOS consultant (http://homepage.mac.com/macguys). My clients are mostly large organizations but I still have a handful of mom and pop's. Almost all of my large clients and about 2/3 of the small users have left Classic behind. For those that haven't, it's for one of two reasons:
1. Apps haven't been ported to OS X. Heck, I know of one factory in Georgia that is still running a Mac IIci because their production line depends on a nuBus card. A more typical example is a biomedical research lab where I do some Filemaker work. They have a few dozen computers including several servers. Two of them are stuck as OS 9 boxes waiting (impatiently) for the developers to step up.
2. Users are running old hardware. I won't recommend upgrading to OS X on anything slower than a G3/400 and that is marginal. "Gee Dave, I just bought that computer 5 years ago...you're telling me that I have to replace it if I'm going to upgarde?" If you're running legacy hardware, you're going to have to run legacy software. Keeping legacy software/hardware running often costs more , but at least you don't ahve to buy a new box.
I ran into the "wasting the wax when the machine power cycles" problem on a couple of Phasers. I called tech support who told us how to turn off power cycling and sent us a free box of ink for our trouble.
I've also noticed that albums have been removed from the system. I bought two songs off an album the first day. I went back yesterday to get another track and that album was not in the store.
I agree with the comments re: getting indie labels in the store. I'd also like to see a lot more of the real old stuff available.
One way for this to happen would be to bounce the signal off the moon. Earth-Moon-Earth is a proven technology that Amateur Radio folks (de KD4BTC) have been doing for years. Check out this article.
Nope..no coax in the community. However, Comcast stops about a mile or so down the road. They want us to pay for the cost of running cable in the community so that they can lease it back to us. I guess I just don't understand economics and the world of big business.
There is copper in the ground; all owend by Sprint. In my initial inquiries, they claimed to not be interested in working with us to a roll-our-own DSL system.
Yipes...this guy just won't stop. I don't know a single neighbor who is a member of the organization this guy is referring to. However, there are a couple of Lutherians down the road and recently a Quaker family moved in.
Same elph who visited our community a few years back for a national communities conference???
Actually, because of the georgraphy here, it really makes more sense to buy several T1s or fractional's and use a cluster approach. I'm very interested in the suggestions relating to ethernet over fiber.
The problem with wireless is that our homes are almost all tucked in to the trees. My house is surrounded by trees at least twice as tall as the house (please, please, no hurricaines). It is possible to do a point2point system by cutting tunnels in the tree cover, but it would require a repeater in almost every home in the community.
We're pretty good at maintaing our infrastructure. We maintain our own dirt roads and mananage to do so without much blood being spilled.
lol...I thnk you might have my bunch confused with some other wackos. We're a long way from Orlando in the other Florida. ... but thanks for the after dinner chuckle.