Here's what I do, and I've had a fair bit of success with my resume:
Put a "Special Skills" section at the top of your resume. In this section, list a few software/hardware/personal skills that stand out. Here, you can also list one or two of your open source contributions, but don't go into too much detail and make sure that you choose only your best contributions. (You want to be succint, but still get the message across.)
Other alternative: you can list one or two of your contributions in your "Activities and Interests" section, near the end of your resume.
# of times I had to reboot my Windows-based computers *today*:
Laptop = twice, once when IE crashed, once when Outlook crashed
Desktop = once, GPF
Strangely, neither computer asked me about my degree in computer engineering before they decided to crash oh-so-ungracefully. Methinks that the bugs in Windows are probably more closely tied to the fact that Microsoft employees can't code.
I didn't want to buy QuickTax (Canadian counterpart of TurboTax) this year because it too is laden with DRM stuff, like "C-dilla" which is installed behind your back.
I bought TaxWiz (basically the only other Canadian alternative for tax software), which *is* owned by Intuit, but doesn't install nasty stuff behind your back. While it *does* have the online registration, it's cheaper than QuickTax and works just as well (without the spyware hassle).
I bought TaxWiz for $28 (tax incl) online, and it was shipped to me in about 5 days; it's pretty good software. http://www.taxwiz.ca
The plastic can't withstand the heat (hence the discolouration), but the ICs and PCB can easily take those temperatures. Those components have to be able to stand the heat of immersive wave soldering, which is generally much higher than what a home oven can put out.
man... Not a single comment here is seeing the alternative side of things -- it may be too bad for Mozilla, but way to go KHTML! I mean, the fact is, Apple could have just as easily allocated resources to develop their own proprietary software, but they're choosing the KDE guys' stuff.
That's pretty significant, and deserves a pat on the back -- not a bunch of whining about why another group was turned away.
Xilinx is not a "semi-startup". They were founded in 1984, currently make over $1 billion a year, and own 50% of the PLD market. (Who writes these things???)
OS/2 seems to be really big in the banking industry.
A friend of mine was withdrawing cash from an ATM machine, when, just after it had subtracted the amount from his bank account but before it dispensed the money, it crashed! He was shocked, understandably. He said that he could see an OS/2 version 1.xx information screen detailing kernel info after the crash.
Since it was after hours (in the evening), he had to go in to the bank the very next morning. The tellers didn't believe him that an ATM could crash, subtract the money from the account, and not dispense it.... Only after opening the machine and accounting for all withdrawals did they finally relent and give him his money.
Heh. I still see OS/2 being used all over at some of Canada's largest banks (CIBC, TD, etc.) -- all of the tellers use apps written for OS/2. It lives on:)
The PMShell (graphical OS/2 environment) was really great and very mature in its day.
I wish that IBM would release this as open-source, as it would make a stable, fast, well-documented, featureful, beautiful alternative to X-Windows under Linux.
Plus, it's got an API that is actually good. It would bring Linux one step closer to the desktop.
Actually, the whole C# problem has been vastly blown out of proportion.
Myth: C# will be used in E&CE courses at UW.
Truth: The Dept of E&CE and Microsoft were in negotiations. No more, no less. Nothing's been confirmed. Nothing's been done, other than an initial "hey, let's talk about this" discussion. (Hence the "memorandum of understanding", not the "legally binding contract saying that you have sold your souls".:)
In fact, public outcry has really forced the Department of E&CE at Waterloo to take a step back and re-think things. As it stands now, it may not even go through.
1) Medical procedures are not patentable. This is basically to prevent the formation of a monopoly on a life-saving procedure. (e.g., If someone invented a procedure to repair spinal cords, she couldn't patent it and charge a zillion dollars, because that would limit poor people's access to the technique.)
2) A life-saving drug (e.g., cure for cancer), if they're the only such life-saving drug available, is not patentable.
3) Some drug patents and trademarks seem to be quickly lost in Canada (while others are not). In the U.S., the trademark "Aspirin" has been lost to common use, so any generic manufacturer can claim that they make aspirin. Not so in Canada -- only Bayer can claim this trademark. In terms of patents, we have lots of generic drugs being manufactured that I don't think they can offer in generic form in the U.S. yet (e.g., generic forms of Reactine & Allegra). Not that I'm complaining -- our drugs are dirt cheap in comparison to what U.S. citizens pay (e.g., a month's supply of Claritin in the U.S. costs over $90 USD according to a recent Reuters article, but costs me only about $18 CAD -- this is due, in part of course, to the fact that it has been available over the counter here for some time... but you get the drift).
1) Applications need a standardized way of being able to insert data from other applications and sharing this info through an intelligent clipboard.
2) Good support for object linking and embedding (OLE).
I believe that Windows got this right a long time ago, and no Linux window manager or GUI interface has come even remotely close. Under Windows, I can open up Corel Draw, copy a vector image and paste it into Adobe PageMaker. PageMaker recognizes that it's a vector image, and lets me move one set of lines in front of or behind another, as I see fit. I can then group these objects, copy them, and paste them into Word. In Word, I can ungroup them, and modify them again as a vector image.
In this example, I just used three completely unrelated programs (which don't have the ability to open the others' native file formats) without having to export files and import files to and from common formats, and without loss of generality -- my original vector drawing stayed that way (it wasn't made into a bitmap in the process).
Alternatively, I could paste a linked version of the original Corel Draw file into my Microsoft Word doc, and whenever I update my Corel Draw file, the image in Word updates automatically -- OLE is very handy, and unless I'm mistaken, it's nowhere close to being supported by Linux programs yet.
Adaptive Server Anywhere, by Sybase, fits all of your requirements. It:
1) Is fast and very inexpensive compared to the other professional alternatives.
2) Is mature (been around 15+ years)
3) Is scalable from a DB size of 80k (seriously, it runs on RIM pagers) up to many gigabytes. It's used by places like McDonald's (their cash registers run it), the city of Edmonton (their hydro personnel run it on their PDAs when out in the field), etc.
4) Is available on oodles of platforms (Microsoft, Linux, *nix, etc.)
5) Requires *very* little maintenance or DB administration. If you're used to SQL Server, you will probably be amazed to see how easy it is to run/administer ASA.
6) Is self-tuning -- it has dynamic cache resizing, like MS SQL Server, as well as a great query optimizer with histogram-based selectivity and a fast join enumeration engine. It supports full ANSI SQL92 and a big chunk of ANSI SQL99, as well as T-SQL (like SQL Server).
7) Is supported by a well-built-up community of users, developers, and Sybase staff who regularly answer questions on the newsgroups, helping new users, helping others tweak their SQL, etc.
8) Has ODBC, TDS (like MS SQL Server), and ANSI/ISO ESQL/C interfaces.
But, don't take my word for it. Check out news://forums.sybase.com (the "sqlanywhere" newsgroups), and ask around. Check out www.sybase.com and download a free evaluation copy and see if it suits your needs.
Personally, at about $400 Canadian, I think that ASA is about the fastest, easiest, most capable DB server around for small to medium-sized DBs.
"So you've decided to be evil" is a humourous website, and in light of this spam Queen story, I thought that you may want some background information on the most hideous of evil occupations.:)
I lost one of my SCSI drives last year (a 4GB Quantum Atlas-2). I was not amused. It was still under warranty, so Quantum (now Maxtor) replaced it with another Atlas-2. The replacement (which came with a 90-day warranty) failed shortly after its 90-day warranty expired. Bummer.
I can't speak for the rest of the industry, but I can say this: none of my older (~300 MB) hard drives (which I've been using in my 486s) have ever failed. They rattle a little, they're rather slow, but never once have they let me down. Can the same be said of more recent media? I suspect not.
For years, I've been compiling the software on my system and tweaking everything by hand. Lately, I've been spending way too long doing this [my computer is slooow], so I decided to nuke my linux install and put on Psyche.
And I love it. It looks great, and RedHat has done a terrific job. Hurray.;)
EXCEPT...
Imagine my surprise when, on my fresh Psyche box, I tried to install xmms MP3 plugins and found that RPM was hanging. No matter what I tried (deleting stale __db locks, rebuilding the rpm database, etc.), I continually had to 'kill -9' to remove the rpm zombie process. I can't upgrade or install new packages without rpm dying.
It turns out that there is very likely a race condition in the signal handling code in rpm 4.1, which ships with Psyche. You may or may not experience this problem, but you can follow the status of the bug at the following URLs:
OS/2 was a great piece of software. The PMShell was attractive, fast, and user-friendly years before similar offerings from Redmond, WA.
Linux, arguably, lacks a graphical environment that can compete with Microsoft in the home market. Many up-and-coming pieces of software look very promising, but may still be years away from attracting the average user. While OS/2 has failed in this milieu in the past, its Workplace Shell (PMShell) was -- and still is -- a capable GUI for the home user.
In this light, has anyone at IBM considered porting PMShell to Linux? PMShell's unified widget set, documented API, excellent performance, and overall finesse would offer many advantages over existing software solutions. An open-source port of the PMShell could oust XFree86 as the graphical environment of choice and firmly establish IBM as a Linux-backing powerhouse.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's what I do, and I've had a fair bit of success with my resume:
Put a "Special Skills" section at the top of your resume. In this section, list a few software/hardware/personal skills that stand out. Here, you can also list one or two of your open source contributions, but don't go into too much detail and make sure that you choose only your best contributions. (You want to be succint, but still get the message across.)
Other alternative: you can list one or two of your contributions in your "Activities and Interests" section, near the end of your resume.
-kris
Sybase's Adaptive Server Enterprise. All of the SQL Server, none of the royalties. :)
# of times I had to reboot my Windows-based computers *today*:
Laptop = twice, once when IE crashed, once when Outlook crashed
Desktop = once, GPF
Strangely, neither computer asked me about my degree in computer engineering before they decided to crash oh-so-ungracefully. Methinks that the bugs in Windows are probably more closely tied to the fact that Microsoft employees can't code.
I didn't want to buy QuickTax (Canadian counterpart of TurboTax) this year because it too is laden with DRM stuff, like "C-dilla" which is installed behind your back.
I bought TaxWiz (basically the only other Canadian alternative for tax software), which *is* owned by Intuit, but doesn't install nasty stuff behind your back. While it *does* have the online registration, it's cheaper than QuickTax and works just as well (without the spyware hassle).
I bought TaxWiz for $28 (tax incl) online, and it was shipped to me in about 5 days; it's pretty good software. http://www.taxwiz.ca
yields theoretically perfect encryption (i.e., it would be "unbreakable"). Of course, one-time pads aren't practical, but it'd be perfect.
The plastic can't withstand the heat (hence the discolouration), but the ICs and PCB can easily take those temperatures. Those components have to be able to stand the heat of immersive wave soldering, which is generally much higher than what a home oven can put out.
man ... Not a single comment here is seeing the alternative side of things -- it may be too bad for Mozilla, but way to go KHTML! I mean, the fact is, Apple could have just as easily allocated resources to develop their own proprietary software, but they're choosing the KDE guys' stuff.
That's pretty significant, and deserves a pat on the back -- not a bunch of whining about why another group was turned away.
Xilinx is not a "semi-startup". They were founded in 1984, currently make over $1 billion a year, and own 50% of the PLD market. (Who writes these things???)
OS/2 seems to be really big in the banking industry.
.... Only after opening the machine and accounting for all withdrawals did they finally relent and give him his money.
:)
A friend of mine was withdrawing cash from an ATM machine, when, just after it had subtracted the amount from his bank account but before it dispensed the money, it crashed! He was shocked, understandably. He said that he could see an OS/2 version 1.xx information screen detailing kernel info after the crash.
Since it was after hours (in the evening), he had to go in to the bank the very next morning. The tellers didn't believe him that an ATM could crash, subtract the money from the account, and not dispense it
Heh. I still see OS/2 being used all over at some of Canada's largest banks (CIBC, TD, etc.) -- all of the tellers use apps written for OS/2. It lives on
The PMShell (graphical OS/2 environment) was really great and very mature in its day.
I wish that IBM would release this as open-source, as it would make a stable, fast, well-documented, featureful, beautiful alternative to X-Windows under Linux.
Plus, it's got an API that is actually good. It would bring Linux one step closer to the desktop.
-kris
Actually, the whole C# problem has been vastly blown out of proportion.
:)
Myth: C# will be used in E&CE courses at UW.
Truth: The Dept of E&CE and Microsoft were in negotiations. No more, no less. Nothing's been confirmed. Nothing's been done, other than an initial "hey, let's talk about this" discussion. (Hence the "memorandum of understanding", not the "legally binding contract saying that you have sold your souls".
In fact, public outcry has really forced the Department of E&CE at Waterloo to take a step back and re-think things. As it stands now, it may not even go through.
-kris
MASc student
University of Waterloo
FYI, in Canada:
... but you get the drift).
1) Medical procedures are not patentable. This is basically to prevent the formation of a monopoly on a life-saving procedure. (e.g., If someone invented a procedure to repair spinal cords, she couldn't patent it and charge a zillion dollars, because that would limit poor people's access to the technique.)
2) A life-saving drug (e.g., cure for cancer), if they're the only such life-saving drug available, is not patentable.
3) Some drug patents and trademarks seem to be quickly lost in Canada (while others are not). In the U.S., the trademark "Aspirin" has been lost to common use, so any generic manufacturer can claim that they make aspirin. Not so in Canada -- only Bayer can claim this trademark. In terms of patents, we have lots of generic drugs being manufactured that I don't think they can offer in generic form in the U.S. yet (e.g., generic forms of Reactine & Allegra). Not that I'm complaining -- our drugs are dirt cheap in comparison to what U.S. citizens pay (e.g., a month's supply of Claritin in the U.S. costs over $90 USD according to a recent Reuters article, but costs me only about $18 CAD -- this is due, in part of course, to the fact that it has been available over the counter here for some time
For more comparisons of patent law differences:
http://www.dww.com/articles/how_do_you.htm
-kris
Two things:
1) Applications need a standardized way of being able to insert data from other applications and sharing this info through an intelligent clipboard.
2) Good support for object linking and embedding (OLE).
I believe that Windows got this right a long time ago, and no Linux window manager or GUI interface has come even remotely close. Under Windows, I can open up Corel Draw, copy a vector image and paste it into Adobe PageMaker. PageMaker recognizes that it's a vector image, and lets me move one set of lines in front of or behind another, as I see fit. I can then group these objects, copy them, and paste them into Word. In Word, I can ungroup them, and modify them again as a vector image.
In this example, I just used three completely unrelated programs (which don't have the ability to open the others' native file formats) without having to export files and import files to and from common formats, and without loss of generality -- my original vector drawing stayed that way (it wasn't made into a bitmap in the process).
Alternatively, I could paste a linked version of the original Corel Draw file into my Microsoft Word doc, and whenever I update my Corel Draw file, the image in Word updates automatically -- OLE is very handy, and unless I'm mistaken, it's nowhere close to being supported by Linux programs yet.
You have to appreciate astrophysicists' short-term excitement and long-term planning.
..." :)
"Two black holes are going to merge! Two black holes are going to merge!
Of course, we'll be watching this very carefully over the next one hundred million years
So who cares if people are able to read Gillette's RF tags? We're talking stuff like soap. And Razors.
;)
("Oh my God! They're shipping _FIVE_ packages of razors in that carton!")
Seems to me that they're just making "the best a man can get" a little easier to deliver
Adaptive Server Anywhere, by Sybase, fits all of your requirements. It:
1) Is fast and very inexpensive compared to the other professional alternatives.
2) Is mature (been around 15+ years)
3) Is scalable from a DB size of 80k (seriously, it runs on RIM pagers) up to many gigabytes. It's used by places like McDonald's (their cash registers run it), the city of Edmonton (their hydro personnel run it on their PDAs when out in the field), etc.
4) Is available on oodles of platforms (Microsoft, Linux, *nix, etc.)
5) Requires *very* little maintenance or DB administration. If you're used to SQL Server, you will probably be amazed to see how easy it is to run/administer ASA.
6) Is self-tuning -- it has dynamic cache resizing, like MS SQL Server, as well as a great query optimizer with histogram-based selectivity and a fast join enumeration engine. It supports full ANSI SQL92 and a big chunk of ANSI SQL99, as well as T-SQL (like SQL Server).
7) Is supported by a well-built-up community of users, developers, and Sybase staff who regularly answer questions on the newsgroups, helping new users, helping others tweak their SQL, etc.
8) Has ODBC, TDS (like MS SQL Server), and ANSI/ISO ESQL/C interfaces.
But, don't take my word for it. Check out news://forums.sybase.com (the "sqlanywhere" newsgroups), and ask around. Check out www.sybase.com and download a free evaluation copy and see if it suits your needs.
Personally, at about $400 Canadian, I think that ASA is about the fastest, easiest, most capable DB server around for small to medium-sized DBs.
"So you've decided to be evil" is a humourous website, and in light of this spam Queen story, I thought that you may want some background information on the most hideous of evil occupations. :)
I lost one of my SCSI drives last year (a 4GB Quantum Atlas-2). I was not amused. It was still under warranty, so Quantum (now Maxtor) replaced it with another Atlas-2. The replacement (which came with a 90-day warranty) failed shortly after its 90-day warranty expired. Bummer.
I can't speak for the rest of the industry, but I can say this: none of my older (~300 MB) hard drives (which I've been using in my 486s) have ever failed. They rattle a little, they're rather slow, but never once have they let me down. Can the same be said of more recent media? I suspect not.
For years, I've been compiling the software on my system and tweaking everything by hand. Lately, I've been spending way too long doing this [my computer is slooow], so I decided to nuke my linux install and put on Psyche.
;)
...
And I love it. It looks great, and RedHat has done a terrific job. Hurray.
EXCEPT
Imagine my surprise when, on my fresh Psyche box, I tried to install xmms MP3 plugins and found that RPM was hanging. No matter what I tried (deleting stale __db locks, rebuilding the rpm database, etc.), I continually had to 'kill -9' to remove the rpm zombie process. I can't upgrade or install new packages without rpm dying.
It turns out that there is very likely a race condition in the signal handling code in rpm 4.1, which ships with Psyche. You may or may not experience this problem, but you can follow the status of the bug at the following URLs:
bug 74726
bug 73097
bug 73134
cheers
OS/2 was a great piece of software. The PMShell was attractive, fast, and user-friendly years before similar offerings from Redmond, WA.
Linux, arguably, lacks a graphical environment that can compete with Microsoft in the home market. Many up-and-coming pieces of software look very promising, but may still be years away from attracting the average user. While OS/2 has failed in this milieu in the past, its Workplace Shell (PMShell) was -- and still is -- a capable GUI for the home user.
In this light, has anyone at IBM considered porting PMShell to Linux? PMShell's unified widget set, documented API, excellent performance, and overall finesse would offer many advantages over existing software solutions. An open-source port of the PMShell could oust XFree86 as the graphical environment of choice and firmly establish IBM as a Linux-backing powerhouse.