How about another example, installing a video card driver.
On windows, I go to nvidias site and find and download an executable. I download the executable and run it (in windows). Drivers are installed.
And on Linux, I just never buy anything that doesn't already have adequate drivers built in to the linux kernel, so the "installing a driver" step is never required.
Now on linux.
(Skipped long description).
Actually, that's probably just the beginning: some day your distribution will want to upgrade your kernel, and your drivers will stop running, so you'll have to go through the above steps again. In the worst case, you may find out that NVidia has given up on making Linux drivers.
We could work on making the driver installation process simpler, or we could work on convincing hardware makers to release drivers under GPL-compatible licenses (or at least the specs necessary to make those). Given such a driver, getting it into the mainline kernel tree usually isn't a big deal, and the installation problem goes away.
The latter approach makes more sense from a free software perspective, and, for my needs, is quite practical--I haven't yet had trouble finding hardware that's supported without external drivers. (For people that need high-performance video cards, perhaps it's harder; if it supports reasonably high 2-d resolutions and manages video playback and tuxracer smoothly, then it's good enough for my purposes).
If you consider MS Office, you pop in the cd, put in a serial number, click next a few times, and it's installed.
Well, if we're really going to compare MS Office to OpenOffice, then we should include the time spent buying MS Office, which is by far the most time consuming step. To my surprise, watching my wife go through this, it also isn't a completely trivial step: there's a bunch of different versions, and you have to read the system requirements and the features for them to figure out which you need.
You missed out a few steps regarding apt-get. First, you need to configure apt-get to point to a server that has OO.
At least on the distribution I use, Debian (Sid), all you need for OpenOffice is the apt sources that were set up for you on installation.
I can't see any reason why a distribution wouldn't do this for you.
Secondly, you need to switch to root to install.
Conceded. Though the lack of a corresponding step in the Windows case is a problem: there needs to be *some* step here, even if a more trivial one, to remind users that they're trusting the new software....
Thirdly, unless I'm mistaken, you need to manually set up KDE/Gnome links or create a desktop link.
Again, Debian does this for me. I haven't looked into it, but I assume it's easy enough that any reasonable distribution would do the same.
I'm certainly not going to claim I haven't had any problems using Debian. But installation of software from their archives is one thing they have down. I'm sure there could be (and will be) further refinements, but basically it's about as straightforward a process as it could be.
Installation of software not in their archives (probably usually because it's proprietary) may be harder; I don't know, because I'm not really interested in that.
You're not accounting for the no-pauses blast that the telemarketers start off with. It's always more than 10 seconds before they pause, and to cut them off is rude - ergo, it takes more than 10 seconds to be polite, even if you just say "I'm sorry, I'm not interested."
Yeah, I always interrupt in that situation. But I don't think politness requires that you wait indefinitely for someone to shut up. A timely interruption to report some information of value to the caller (in this case, that they're wasting their breath...) is nothing Miss Manners would disapprove of.
I learned my phone skills in the military. But telemarketers who ignore the do-not-call list have forced me into a corner. Now, I simply hang up on them rather than waste more than 10 seconds on trying to be polite.
I just timed myself saying "I'm sorry, I'm not interested"; comes in at well under 2 seconds. You can add "could you add me to your no-call list?" (which in my experience actually seems worthwhile), and the ensuing "yes sir" and "thanks, bye" still shouldn't put you over 5 seconds.
I figure there's a small chance that some day I'll misclassify a legit call as a telemarketing call, or just be unluckly enough to know someone in telemarketing and, while I'm certainly not going to give in (anyone who thinks manners requires them to listen to the whole schpiel is an idiot), if I can take a couple seconds and be minimally civilized than I figure it's worthwhile....
4. I give telemarketers one chance to hang up before I slam the receiver down on them. Is this polite or should I listen to their pitch? Can I blow a Fox-40 whistle into the receiver?
Obviously someone interrupting you in your home to sell you something is about as rude as it gets. But being polite to them doesn't mean you have to give in. You can always just start right away with "I'm sorry, I'm not interested" (bonus points for "would you please put me on your no-call list?" which actually seems to help). It's only minimally more effort than just hanging up. I figure there's a small (OK, probably very small) chance that I'll misclassify a real caller as a telemarketer some day and I'd rather they didn't find me totally uncivilized....
And on the answering machine question, I know people that hate leaving messages, so I guess some allowances have to be made if, say, you have family in that group. But there's no way to both be polite and to be ready to drop everything (and possibly cut off whoever you're really talking to at the moment) anytime someone calls.
Is 30 mph really that unapproachable for the average biker with a long descent and high gears?
No, it's not hard. The gearing isn't even important--work on tucking in and improving your aerodynamics. Given a sufficiently good hill, pedalling may not be required at all....
--Bruce Fields
Re:Somewhere in the middle
on
Hacking Quartz
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The real problem is that there are far more people who know programming that you have to compete against for jobs...
I don't know, it may be that the market for "programmers" is poor, but that doesn't mean there isn't a need for a higher level of computer literacy in the general population. If you're someone in another specialty (e.g., you're mainly a biologist) and have some programming skills, then there's probably a lot of people that will be very happy to have you around.
think it is far easier for young people to get started these days and they have access to far more powerful tools and OS than the beginners of the past. I didn't get a Unix machine (NeXT) until I was 20, we have 5 year olds using it on a Mac now. The barrier to entry is far lower now than it ever was and it will continue to be.
That's all true, it's amazing that these days you can get such high-powered hardware so cheaply, and run entire operating systems entirely from code that you can tinker with.
On the other hand, even the lowest-end machine has so many other distractions on it now--games, email, etc. The basic interpreter was sometimes the only fun thing that came with the cheap home computers of the 80's--the only way to get a game might be to spend money on a cartridge or type one in from a magazine--whereas now you have to dig a little and look up documentation elsewhere to find a programming environment for your new PC.
Hey, I learned something about acting from the Matrix. I mean, I'd always heard people talk about stuff like "chemistry" before, but I never knew what they meant until I saw that first kiss in the Matrix and realized that I felt, well, absolutely nothing.
And I'm normally a sucker for movie romances. Was there anyone that was moved at all by the supposed romance between Trinity and Neo?
After a while it became really painful to watch those CGI'd smith and neo fights that would just drag on forever and had action similar to what a 10 yr old might daydream during english class. It went beyond the "matrix" physics and just became absurd.
Of course, the funny thing is that the fights in the first movie were already absurd, at least from the perspective of someone not already exposed to lots of kung-fu movies.
Come to think of it, the fight scenes in almost all movies are absurd; we just take them for granted because they fit into a language of fight moves we've seen in previous movies. The sound and visuals associated with a given punch may be completely unrealistic, but we understand what it's all supposed to mean for the characters involved so we accept it.
In each Matrix sequel they built up an increasingly bizarre and abstract vocabulary of fight moves, coming to a sort of logical conclusion with those enormous waves of distorted space in the final scenes. It was that development that was one of the few things that kept the movies interesting for me, exactly because it was so weird.
No. If you can't afford to pay for the damage yourself, you need to insure it. I have a house. I insure it as I can't afford to pay for a new one should it burn down.
Fair enough, because there's an argument that you *need* the house to live in.
But if someone's buying themselves a digital camera that's so expensive that their finances would be devastated by having to buy it again, then I worry....
Most people can't afford the open heart surgery. So they get medical insurance. There is this story about a doctor who tells his patient: "You need a bypass. What is your insurance company?" -- "I don't have any." -- "But you're going to die if you don't very bad decision. You can't pay for the $100,000 that open heart surgery costs.". -- "Nope. Very good decision. I've saved well over that $100,000 by not paying the insurance fees, it's waiting in a bankacount for you to send me the bill."
I assume you're being sarcastic, but this isn't at all unrealistic: my medical plan is about $300/month, so if I keep that up I'll have spent much more than $100,000 on insurance before I'm of an age where open-heart surgery is likely, without even taking into consideration the effects of compound interest.
Not that I'm arguing against buying health insurance--I'm certainly not going to get rid of mine, and not just because my employer pays for virtually all of it. But this sort of big-ticket stuff--where you really do *need* it, and where the effects of having it would be worse than the simple dollar amount would suggest--are what make insurance worth it. Home computer insurance would almost never fall into that category.
Precisely. Getting an insurance policy is not about counting the odds. In the long run, mos people will end up losing money on their insurance policy.
The clue is that you get a small recurring payment that you can easily budget for, instead of a possible single large payment that can wreck your personal economy.
Sure. But it *only* makes sense when the loss really would "wreck your personal economy". For most people, this means medical care, houses, maybe expensive equipment that's necessary to their business, but not much else. Most of us can budget for the loss of a camera or a computer.
Insurance is about risk minimization. In all likelihood, your house won't ever burn down. But if it ever does, you will be royally fucked if you didn't have insurance.
Of course. (Well, maybe: there are people that really do hold off buying a house until they could pay for it in cash, and who probably really could just self-insure, which I think is impressive.) But, I agree, of course, the usefulness of insurance companies is that they can handle very large risks by distributing them over many people.
Of course, computers are not very expensive and so it doesn't make much sense to insure them.
This is my only point.
But insurance does have a valuable purpose, and it's not just to rip you off.
In the case of most insurance on consumer electronics, I'd argue that it really is just there to rip you off (stuff like extended coverage from Best Buy being the worst example); either you're really spending much more than is responsible, or you just haven't thought through the math. For the average U.S. family, for example, I'd think that if they can't budget for an unexpected expense of a few thousand dollars, then they have much more serious problems to worry about than losing their digital camera....
Most people won't get their money out of the insurance. So they're out 150 bucks. Big deal. Losing that 150 bucks didn't ruin their life.
The annual premium will of course add up over a lifetime, more so if you have several such policies.
Now if you happen to lose 10,000 dollars worth of computer equipment, that insurance will make a huge difference.
In most cases, the 10,000 loss will be worth precisely 66 and 2/3 times the 150 loss.... So the insurance is only worth it if your chances of a 10,000 loss are more than 1 in 66. (Well, actually we'd need to factor in the more likely smaller losses. But rest assured the insurance company *has* already done that.)
But you're right, we all have limited budgets, so for a sufficiently large risk it no longer becomes possible to amortize that risk in the way a large insurance company can. Weighing risks becomes more complicated as the magnitude of the risk approaches the magnitude of your savings.
If you didn't really *need* that equipment, then the hypothetical loss above probably really is only worth the $10000, and the simple cost-benefit analysis aboves says to skip the insurance.
But it could be more complicated: for example, if you lost the equipment and couldn't afford to replace it, and if your business depended on that equipment, then the actual impact of the loss would be more than the simple $1000 figure represents.
I can't afford two cars at once, so maybe I should reconsider buying a single car!
I'd certainly at least consider a smaller or less expensive car. But if the car is required, for example, to get to work, and if you can't afford to self-insure, then this is a case where insurance would make sense.
What about a house for that matter.
Sure. For a few big-ticket items (houses, medical care, in some cases cars), insurance makes sense even though you know it's likely to be a loss.
What I'm arguing is that insurance is a mistake for stuff like cameras; for all but a few professional photographers, it's just not going to make financial sense to spend so much on your camera that you couldn't afford to self-insure.
No thanks. It's like trying to save money by playing at a casino--the house has already figured out all the odds, and they're not in your favor....
I mean, I could try to do the math: add up the costs of all the various possible accidents, multiply by likely annual frequency of each accident, then compare with the annual cost of insurance.
Or I could just remember that I know a lot of people who were as good or better than me at math who now have careers in the insurance business and access to much better data than me....
So, as an alternative, let me propose: always, always, self-insure! If your happiness or livelihood depend on having a $2000 laptop available to you at all times, then make sure you keep $2000 around in the bank. In adition to being much cheaper in the long run, this form of insurance is more convenient (no need for claims forms, just write the check!).
If you can't afford to save the replacement cost of your essential equipment, maybe it's worth considering whether you could afford it in the first place.
I just think that, with the funding, the projects are encouraged in a certain direction. This isn't always bad, but seeing something with a "Optimized for the Pentium 4" logo always makes me wonder what would have happened if it didnt have this funding.
You've seen free software projects with "Optimized for the Pentium 4" on them?
I think people may not realize the extent to which free software development is already corporate-funded.
When you see "XGA," what you're seeing is the maximum resolution as well as the aspect ratio and the pixel size all rolled into one.
Thanks for the explanation, I hadn't realized that. (But I'm confused by "pixel size"--does that have any meaning independent of aspect ratio? Are there people who care whether their pixels have pointy edges or something?)
I'd still prefer "1600 x 1200, 4:3 aspect ratio", or similar. Maybe the names make sense for stuff like movies and TV, where there really are a limited set of formats that don't change often, but for computer monitors they seem to be proliferating.... It's annoying have to relearn all this alphabet soup every time I get a new laptop.
I have no issue with our attack on Afghanastan. They harboured known terrorists who attacked us.
Has it helped? I don't know. Certainly the last couple years haven't been easy on Afghanistan--as far as I can tell, all they really have going for them lately is a bumper opium crop....
We are quickly approaching a point where many jobs could be done by machines or AI systems yet governments refuse to consider what to do with the problem of mass layoffs due to this effect.
But, as others have pointed out, this has already happened several times over. A few generations ago, almost all of us worked in an industry (agriculture) that now employs a miniscule percentage of the worforce. And yet we don't have 90% unemployment....
I can build a Gentoo box from stage 1, install / configure apache, php, perl, etc, make firewalls, use nmap, and even write network apps if necessary (I've written a linux AIM client). I run Gentoo on my desktop and my web server, and I've never had my server go down since I installed it except for power failures.
Sounds pretty good to me, depending on the sort of work you're looking for. One of the nice things about the rise of open source software and cheap powerful hardware is that anyone can play around with this stuff. It's always nice to run across someone who clearly actually has done so. At least it shows an interest.
Do you have hobbies? Try writing software that can be used in your hobby.
One way to look at it: when you're unemployed you're always wishing you had more money, and when you're employed you're always wishing you had more time....
So, now that you're in the lucky position of having too much time on your hands, make the best of it; since noone's paying you anyway, you might as well work your dream job. Write the ultimate first-person shooter. Maintain computers for whoever it is in your neighborhood that you think is fighting the good fight. Whatever. Have fun, talk to people about it, and maybe you'll run into someone interesting whose needs complement yours....
The right references, and the right person speaking up for you when someone mentions an opening, make all the difference. If you aren't outgoing, then at least be pleasant towards those around you whenever possible.
The other lesson I take from this, which has been true to me too to some extent, is to seek out people that are geeked about the same stuff as you. It's fun, you learn a lot, and you might get a career out of it.
But I've said this before on Slashdot and I'll say it again. Sending out a one or two page document to some stranger is a piss poor way of getting a job.
Absolutely. "What Color is your Parachute" is one classic exponent of this point of view, and worth at least a skim.
Go ahead and mail out lots of resumes--to jobs you genuinely think you're suited for, even if you don't meet whatever bizarrely rigid set of requirements they give in the posting. But save most of your energy for pursuing stuff through personal contacts.
It's hard because you feel like it'll make you look look like a jerk or make you desparate. Certainly you shouldn't be pestering people. But, especially if you have a genuine interest in the field you're going into, you may find it comes a lot more naturally.
Go to user group meetings. They're always looking for volunteers, people to give talks, or just interesting people to hang out with. If you've done any academic work, look for chances to present your research. In general, seek out smart, interesting people that are into the same stuff you are, and job information is likely to come your way as a natural part of the process. It can be a long-term process--it might get you the job after next, rather than the next one--but it's really the best way.
I'm going to critique your online resume and I'm going to be honest.... Last thing - if you are going to post your resume, do it on a domain that doesn't have anything else on it. Nothing like finding a resume in www.yourdomain.com/resume and when the HR folks go up a level and find a blog talking about sex with a different college chick every night.
I keep an online resume posted on my website, but it's partly just for fun, and for my own convenience--when someone actually needs a resume I take a copy off my website, clean it up and tailor it a bit, and send them a copy, instead of sending a URL. So while I'd certainly leave out the pictures and personal details from the resume given to actual potential employers, I don't it's so terrible for an online resume to be a bit more personal.
If somebody really cares about all my personal details, they can google for my every usenet posting. That's up to them, and I'm not going to worry about it much....
Anyway, most of those points sound fine. I'd also add that some of the language in the resume might be streamlined a bit (e.g., I prefer to avoid "utilize" where "use" would do), and made a little more concrete (the use of the word "strategies" in a couple places left me scratching me head--as someone hiring I might be asking myself "but what did he actually do?".).
And of course the CV would need tailoring for any specific position.
I have had a running fight with my daughter's teachers for 4 years now that they should send me emails if there are any problems. I have offered to add my address to their email address book and been forbidden. I have been told that writing me would take too much time but a parent teacher conference was ok.
Keeping in touch with teachers is good, as is offering to help with computer stuff, but.... I think it's easy not to realize how much time can be sucked up just by the logistics of dealing with a large number of students and their parents. Say you spend just half an hour a month communicating with each student's family, and say you have 50 students, suddenly that's a huge time commitment....
Though no doubt in part due to an unwillingness to deal with the computer, I suspect the main their main fear is that they know that a regularly scheduled parent-teacher conference is a manageable, measurable time commitment whereas spontaneous email conversations could be harder to keep under control.
Even in the case where parents are volunteering their own time, it's not always easy, since managing volunteers, who you can't really force to keep their commitments, and whose strengths and weaknesses you don't really know, can be a big job with uncertain rewards.
Slashdot Mirror
And on Linux, I just never buy anything that doesn't already have adequate drivers built in to the linux kernel, so the "installing a driver" step is never required.
(Skipped long description).
Actually, that's probably just the beginning: some day your distribution will want to upgrade your kernel, and your drivers will stop running, so you'll have to go through the above steps again. In the worst case, you may find out that NVidia has given up on making Linux drivers.
We could work on making the driver installation process simpler, or we could work on convincing hardware makers to release drivers under GPL-compatible licenses (or at least the specs necessary to make those). Given such a driver, getting it into the mainline kernel tree usually isn't a big deal, and the installation problem goes away.
The latter approach makes more sense from a free software perspective, and, for my needs, is quite practical--I haven't yet had trouble finding hardware that's supported without external drivers. (For people that need high-performance video cards, perhaps it's harder; if it supports reasonably high 2-d resolutions and manages video playback and tuxracer smoothly, then it's good enough for my purposes).
--Bruce Fields
Well, if we're really going to compare MS Office to OpenOffice, then we should include the time spent buying MS Office, which is by far the most time consuming step. To my surprise, watching my wife go through this, it also isn't a completely trivial step: there's a bunch of different versions, and you have to read the system requirements and the features for them to figure out which you need.
At least on the distribution I use, Debian (Sid), all you need for OpenOffice is the apt sources that were set up for you on installation. I can't see any reason why a distribution wouldn't do this for you.
Conceded. Though the lack of a corresponding step in the Windows case is a problem: there needs to be *some* step here, even if a more trivial one, to remind users that they're trusting the new software....
Again, Debian does this for me. I haven't looked into it, but I assume it's easy enough that any reasonable distribution would do the same.
I'm certainly not going to claim I haven't had any problems using Debian. But installation of software from their archives is one thing they have down. I'm sure there could be (and will be) further refinements, but basically it's about as straightforward a process as it could be.
Installation of software not in their archives (probably usually because it's proprietary) may be harder; I don't know, because I'm not really interested in that.
--Bruce Fields
Yeah, I always interrupt in that situation. But I don't think politness requires that you wait indefinitely for someone to shut up. A timely interruption to report some information of value to the caller (in this case, that they're wasting their breath...) is nothing Miss Manners would disapprove of.
I just timed myself saying "I'm sorry, I'm not interested"; comes in at well under 2 seconds. You can add "could you add me to your no-call list?" (which in my experience actually seems worthwhile), and the ensuing "yes sir" and "thanks, bye" still shouldn't put you over 5 seconds.
I figure there's a small chance that some day I'll misclassify a legit call as a telemarketing call, or just be unluckly enough to know someone in telemarketing and, while I'm certainly not going to give in (anyone who thinks manners requires them to listen to the whole schpiel is an idiot), if I can take a couple seconds and be minimally civilized than I figure it's worthwhile....
--Bruce Fields
Obviously someone interrupting you in your home to sell you something is about as rude as it gets. But being polite to them doesn't mean you have to give in. You can always just start right away with "I'm sorry, I'm not interested" (bonus points for "would you please put me on your no-call list?" which actually seems to help). It's only minimally more effort than just hanging up. I figure there's a small (OK, probably very small) chance that I'll misclassify a real caller as a telemarketer some day and I'd rather they didn't find me totally uncivilized....
And on the answering machine question, I know people that hate leaving messages, so I guess some allowances have to be made if, say, you have family in that group. But there's no way to both be polite and to be ready to drop everything (and possibly cut off whoever you're really talking to at the moment) anytime someone calls.
--Bruce Fields
No, it's not hard. The gearing isn't even important--work on tucking in and improving your aerodynamics. Given a sufficiently good hill, pedalling may not be required at all....
--Bruce Fields
I don't know, it may be that the market for "programmers" is poor, but that doesn't mean there isn't a need for a higher level of computer literacy in the general population. If you're someone in another specialty (e.g., you're mainly a biologist) and have some programming skills, then there's probably a lot of people that will be very happy to have you around.
That's all true, it's amazing that these days you can get such high-powered hardware so cheaply, and run entire operating systems entirely from code that you can tinker with.
On the other hand, even the lowest-end machine has so many other distractions on it now--games, email, etc. The basic interpreter was sometimes the only fun thing that came with the cheap home computers of the 80's--the only way to get a game might be to spend money on a cartridge or type one in from a magazine--whereas now you have to dig a little and look up documentation elsewhere to find a programming environment for your new PC.
--Bruce Fields
Hey, I learned something about acting from the Matrix. I mean, I'd always heard people talk about stuff like "chemistry" before, but I never knew what they meant until I saw that first kiss in the Matrix and realized that I felt, well, absolutely nothing.
And I'm normally a sucker for movie romances. Was there anyone that was moved at all by the supposed romance between Trinity and Neo?
--Bruce Fields
Of course, the funny thing is that the fights in the first movie were already absurd, at least from the perspective of someone not already exposed to lots of kung-fu movies.
Come to think of it, the fight scenes in almost all movies are absurd; we just take them for granted because they fit into a language of fight moves we've seen in previous movies. The sound and visuals associated with a given punch may be completely unrealistic, but we understand what it's all supposed to mean for the characters involved so we accept it.
In each Matrix sequel they built up an increasingly bizarre and abstract vocabulary of fight moves, coming to a sort of logical conclusion with those enormous waves of distorted space in the final scenes. It was that development that was one of the few things that kept the movies interesting for me, exactly because it was so weird.
--Bruce Fields
Fair enough, because there's an argument that you *need* the house to live in.
But if someone's buying themselves a digital camera that's so expensive that their finances would be devastated by having to buy it again, then I worry....
I assume you're being sarcastic, but this isn't at all unrealistic: my medical plan is about $300/month, so if I keep that up I'll have spent much more than $100,000 on insurance before I'm of an age where open-heart surgery is likely, without even taking into consideration the effects of compound interest.
Not that I'm arguing against buying health insurance--I'm certainly not going to get rid of mine, and not just because my employer pays for virtually all of it. But this sort of big-ticket stuff--where you really do *need* it, and where the effects of having it would be worse than the simple dollar amount would suggest--are what make insurance worth it. Home computer insurance would almost never fall into that category.
--Bruce Fields
Sure. But it *only* makes sense when the loss really would "wreck your personal economy". For most people, this means medical care, houses, maybe expensive equipment that's necessary to their business, but not much else. Most of us can budget for the loss of a camera or a computer.
--Bruce Fields
Of course. (Well, maybe: there are people that really do hold off buying a house until they could pay for it in cash, and who probably really could just self-insure, which I think is impressive.) But, I agree, of course, the usefulness of insurance companies is that they can handle very large risks by distributing them over many people.
This is my only point.
In the case of most insurance on consumer electronics, I'd argue that it really is just there to rip you off (stuff like extended coverage from Best Buy being the worst example); either you're really spending much more than is responsible, or you just haven't thought through the math. For the average U.S. family, for example, I'd think that if they can't budget for an unexpected expense of a few thousand dollars, then they have much more serious problems to worry about than losing their digital camera....
--Bruce Fields
In most cases, the 10,000 loss will be worth precisely 66 and 2/3 times the 150 loss.... So the insurance is only worth it if your chances of a 10,000 loss are more than 1 in 66. (Well, actually we'd need to factor in the more likely smaller losses. But rest assured the insurance company *has* already done that.)
But you're right, we all have limited budgets, so for a sufficiently large risk it no longer becomes possible to amortize that risk in the way a large insurance company can. Weighing risks becomes more complicated as the magnitude of the risk approaches the magnitude of your savings.
If you didn't really *need* that equipment, then the hypothetical loss above probably really is only worth the $10000, and the simple cost-benefit analysis aboves says to skip the insurance.
But it could be more complicated: for example, if you lost the equipment and couldn't afford to replace it, and if your business depended on that equipment, then the actual impact of the loss would be more than the simple $1000 figure represents.
I'd certainly at least consider a smaller or less expensive car. But if the car is required, for example, to get to work, and if you can't afford to self-insure, then this is a case where insurance would make sense.
Sure. For a few big-ticket items (houses, medical care, in some cases cars), insurance makes sense even though you know it's likely to be a loss.
What I'm arguing is that insurance is a mistake for stuff like cameras; for all but a few professional photographers, it's just not going to make financial sense to spend so much on your camera that you couldn't afford to self-insure.
--Bruce Fields
No thanks. It's like trying to save money by playing at a casino--the house has already figured out all the odds, and they're not in your favor....
I mean, I could try to do the math: add up the costs of all the various possible accidents, multiply by likely annual frequency of each accident, then compare with the annual cost of insurance.
Or I could just remember that I know a lot of people who were as good or better than me at math who now have careers in the insurance business and access to much better data than me....
So, as an alternative, let me propose: always, always, self-insure! If your happiness or livelihood depend on having a $2000 laptop available to you at all times, then make sure you keep $2000 around in the bank. In adition to being much cheaper in the long run, this form of insurance is more convenient (no need for claims forms, just write the check!).
If you can't afford to save the replacement cost of your essential equipment, maybe it's worth considering whether you could afford it in the first place.
--J. Bruce Fields
You've seen free software projects with "Optimized for the Pentium 4" on them?
I think people may not realize the extent to which free software development is already corporate-funded.
--Bruce Fields
Thanks for the explanation, I hadn't realized that. (But I'm confused by "pixel size"--does that have any meaning independent of aspect ratio? Are there people who care whether their pixels have pointy edges or something?)
I'd still prefer "1600 x 1200, 4:3 aspect ratio", or similar. Maybe the names make sense for stuff like movies and TV, where there really are a limited set of formats that don't change often, but for computer monitors they seem to be proliferating.... It's annoying have to relearn all this alphabet soup every time I get a new laptop.
--Bruce Fields
"QUXGA-W"? Who comes up with these names? I mean, is there really anyone for whom that makes more sense than just "3840x2400"? --Bruce Fields
Has it helped? I don't know. Certainly the last couple years haven't been easy on Afghanistan--as far as I can tell, all they really have going for them lately is a bumper opium crop....
--Bruce Fields
But, as others have pointed out, this has already happened several times over. A few generations ago, almost all of us worked in an industry (agriculture) that now employs a miniscule percentage of the worforce. And yet we don't have 90% unemployment....
--Bruce Fields
Sounds pretty good to me, depending on the sort of work you're looking for. One of the nice things about the rise of open source software and cheap powerful hardware is that anyone can play around with this stuff. It's always nice to run across someone who clearly actually has done so. At least it shows an interest.
--Bruce Fields
One way to look at it: when you're unemployed you're always wishing you had more money, and when you're employed you're always wishing you had more time....
So, now that you're in the lucky position of having too much time on your hands, make the best of it; since noone's paying you anyway, you might as well work your dream job. Write the ultimate first-person shooter. Maintain computers for whoever it is in your neighborhood that you think is fighting the good fight. Whatever. Have fun, talk to people about it, and maybe you'll run into someone interesting whose needs complement yours....
--Bruce Fields
The other lesson I take from this, which has been true to me too to some extent, is to seek out people that are geeked about the same stuff as you. It's fun, you learn a lot, and you might get a career out of it.
--Bruce Fields
Absolutely. "What Color is your Parachute" is one classic exponent of this point of view, and worth at least a skim.
Go ahead and mail out lots of resumes--to jobs you genuinely think you're suited for, even if you don't meet whatever bizarrely rigid set of requirements they give in the posting. But save most of your energy for pursuing stuff through personal contacts.
It's hard because you feel like it'll make you look look like a jerk or make you desparate. Certainly you shouldn't be pestering people. But, especially if you have a genuine interest in the field you're going into, you may find it comes a lot more naturally.
Go to user group meetings. They're always looking for volunteers, people to give talks, or just interesting people to hang out with. If you've done any academic work, look for chances to present your research. In general, seek out smart, interesting people that are into the same stuff you are, and job information is likely to come your way as a natural part of the process. It can be a long-term process--it might get you the job after next, rather than the next one--but it's really the best way.
--Bruce Fields
I keep an online resume posted on my website, but it's partly just for fun, and for my own convenience--when someone actually needs a resume I take a copy off my website, clean it up and tailor it a bit, and send them a copy, instead of sending a URL. So while I'd certainly leave out the pictures and personal details from the resume given to actual potential employers, I don't it's so terrible for an online resume to be a bit more personal.
If somebody really cares about all my personal details, they can google for my every usenet posting. That's up to them, and I'm not going to worry about it much....
Anyway, most of those points sound fine. I'd also add that some of the language in the resume might be streamlined a bit (e.g., I prefer to avoid "utilize" where "use" would do), and made a little more concrete (the use of the word "strategies" in a couple places left me scratching me head--as someone hiring I might be asking myself "but what did he actually do?".).
And of course the CV would need tailoring for any specific position.
Best of luck!
--Bruce Fields
Keeping in touch with teachers is good, as is offering to help with computer stuff, but.... I think it's easy not to realize how much time can be sucked up just by the logistics of dealing with a large number of students and their parents. Say you spend just half an hour a month communicating with each student's family, and say you have 50 students, suddenly that's a huge time commitment....
Though no doubt in part due to an unwillingness to deal with the computer, I suspect the main their main fear is that they know that a regularly scheduled parent-teacher conference is a manageable, measurable time commitment whereas spontaneous email conversations could be harder to keep under control.
Even in the case where parents are volunteering their own time, it's not always easy, since managing volunteers, who you can't really force to keep their commitments, and whose strengths and weaknesses you don't really know, can be a big job with uncertain rewards.
--Bruce Fields