RAW is really huge on disk, but you'll never regret being able to fix that low-exposure shot of the first birthday candle in the dark! Light room works pretty well on local NAS. If you'll be mounting it over WiFi, invest in a really good router. Quality matters when you're wondering why your throughput just fell off a cliff.
If you feel that the company's culture won't be accepting of your needs, run away. It's that acceptance that you need to look for. Don't think that you need to change to fit the existing environment. That's not culture. Is just what the current culture already accepts.
That's what it is, after all. I thought Apple was crazy having non-customizable computers in the 80s and 90s. But by the 2k's, it seemed obvious that they included everything that 99% of people needed in a box. Other people are finally realizing there's a consumer electronics niche for computing products. No biggie. "Curated Computers" are in the Smithsonian.
I took both (2 semesters of discrete math, in fact; 3 semesters of traditional math). In my work, primarily in integration and web apps, I find the set theory and discrete math (logic) a lot more useful. However, if you do other things, you might find the "traditional" math more useful. But I wanted to share that in my own curriculum, I was required to take an Algorithms and Data Structures class that covered almost exactly the discrete math topics. I took them at the same time. The A&DS class was (in theory) more practical, but much of the theory was the same. Learning proofs will make your brain hurt (in the "no pain, no gain" sense), but I doubt you need both A&DS and discrete math unless, as others have pointed out, you plan to go for a PhD and go into research.
I had a very personal experience with just this kind of situation, and it ended with my company folding. Here are some tips to make sure the same thing doesn't happen to you:
1) Fail fast. This is ALWAYS rule #1 in a startup. If there are any terms and conditions required for the offer to go through, make sure you understand them and make sure the conditions can be met. Will any of you need to relo? How many of you must be retained and for how long? Are there any "proof points" required for the purchase to go through? It may seem strange, but your goal is to get them to reject you by pushing on any weak parts of the deal.
2) You haven't finished until the check CLEARS. Never, under any circumstances, assume that things will go well. In my experience, we were assured several times by high-ranking members of the acquiring company that everything was great and we had nothing to worry about. Don't believe them. It's business, and if business conditions change before the check clears, you can be sure there's some kind of escape clause in the contract. So, until you've taken the money out of the bank in large denomination bills, the deal isn't over.
3) Forget about your feelings and do what's best for your young business. This can be REALLY hard. It sounds like you're in a similar situation to the one I was in: the large company offers scale and ability to execute that you will spend years building. Your company seems to be so young that there is a lot of risk and uncertainty. But, is your young company experiencing traction? What would the impact be to your business if you are distracted for 2-3 months working through terms and have nothing to show for that time? Have you made it to the point where people understand the value you will bring? In other words, would they miss you if you disappeared? If so, your company may be better served by building those relationships with your current or future customers and generating some "raving fans".
HTH
I keep my 360 in a cabinet under the TV to dull the noise of its massive fans. And since it raises the temperature in there high enough to bake a small cake, I can't imagine having it sitting out so I can actually use the IR remote. Anybody actually have a good experience keeping these things in the living room? Much less trying to watch a movie/show with dialog?
I'll grant you that some large number of activations go through just fine. Mine didn't. I was a new account (no porting issues), and I called Customer Service (and the so-called "Resolution Team") over 10 times. At NO time were the following questions answered:
1) How long will my phone take to activate?
I mean, really, how hard is it to say "Well, people in your situation who began activation at a particular time are activating after 36 hours."
2) (In response to "You just have to wait...") How long should I wait until I call back because there is a problem?
Again, how hard is this to answer? You know (or should know) where I am in the process and how long each step takes. Someone actually told me to call back at midnight. When I did, I got the SAME STORY "Just wait."
In addition, I can't count the number of times I was told "I can't help you until you have a mobile number." To which, I queried, "Can you give me a mobile number?" The answer, in short, was "No!"
Considering that their failure rate is LESS THAN what they expected, at least according to one account from the contractor who actually performed the activations, the customer service aspect of this is abysmal.
Jobs is a strategic and tactical thinker. People didn't think the world needed another MP3 player when the iPod came out, but he saw an opportunity.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with SD TV content (I watch plenty of this on my MythTV box, depriving Comcast of $10.99/mo!)
The quality of the video on Apple TV is a big let-down (considering how consistently cool and great the UI is, plus the strong recommendation that you hook this box up to a huge, pretty TV).
What I'm really responding to, though, is the "videophile" comment. The recent EMI/Apple non-DRM, high-quality tracks may point to the future of Apple video offerings. Jobs is in a truly unique position to influence the tech/media industry, with his long history of being a content owner and his new role in Disney. If they can do a deal like the EMI deal, but for video (and people have big enough pipes), then there are big possibilities for Apple TV as a product line (as the iPod has evolved from a single product to an entire line).
Just curious, but does anyone here actually use a mobile wireless service to download distros, patches, WoW updates, etc.? I agree that the marketing is busted here, and my initial reaction was exactly the same. Then I realized they were talking about the "EVDO" wireless data service. I normally don't patch multiple Linux boxen from a random coffee shop or from the passenger seat of my friend's car during a road trip (don't know about the rest of you folks), and I certainly don't d/l movies or run peer-to-peer software for the 6-8 hours it would take to d/l anything remotely large over this network...
I am so happy that someone brought this up. The iDrive isn't bad per se, but it is executed extremely poorly. The first problem I have is part of this design arrogance the previous poster mentioned. I really wish they combined the iDrive with a few discrete controls for contolling the "20%" functions that I (and I assume everybody else) uses. If I just had temperature setting I might be happy (all BMWs have reasonably good automatic climate control; but I am often forced to share the car with my wife, who likes a car about 10F warmer than I do!). I recently perused an updated iDrive, and it's fairly reasonable, but when I'm in "navigation" mode, I don't want to leave it to go to my next radio preset (which I wouldn't have to, since there are steering wheel controls) or to bump the temp up or down a few degrees. I put this in the category of "redundancy is not universally a bad thing." When it comes to UI, I think we have lots of evidence that redundancy can be a really good thing. When a couple of 70+ years can't even drive away in their brand spanking new 745i because they can't figure out how to start the car or to put it in gear, well that's a problem.
Cupholders, eh? During the dot-com hay day, I had an Audi TT. Have you ever seen where they placed the cupholders on those things? It's almost like the German engineers said to each other, "The Americans want their cup holders, do they? We'll give them cup holders, all right!" It's a real piece of check-box marketing. You have to reach back to the rear fire wall to grab your cup. Now, I know, drinking and driving and all that, but this is really my last vice while driving (what's a commute without hot coffee?).
It is truly amazing that products like the iDrive make it out there at all, and even more amazing that it takes a forum like this to point out the obvious flaws in the system. And that most of the improvement in the current system is cosmetic! I mean, if I'm searching my nav system, don't you know that I don't know what category you placed it in? Why do you make me restrict my search to one, specific category! Imagine if Google made you use DMOZ to specify exactly what category you want to search before entering a search term!
Whew. Thanks for the chance to get that off my chest!
I may be crazy, but this pipeline works great if you (1) know how to program a DFA and (2) can rely on some semblance of consistence across various documents from a single source. Majix will also automate Word to convert it to RTF before you start processing it, at least the last time I used it.
Everyone seems to be fixated on consumer privacy concerns instead of pointing out that the financial success of desktop search has absolutely nothing to do with advertising and ecommerce. What if every company had an internal search engine and the compatible desktop search engine on every desktop in the company? The mind reels at how easy it would be to find information anywhere in the company (including your personal web history or your manager's spreadsheet containing everyone's salary information).
The privacy concerns remain, but I think the search vendors will be okay financially once large companies are able to see the potential of such an infrastructure.
Thanks for reminding me to vote this year. In my state, the registration forms are online, and I expect EVERYONE who gripes on this list about legislation in their democratic country to VOTE against people who would pass such idiotic laws. I'll be waiting at the polls to watch for you! (Wait, that would be illegal, too...)
Or, here's an idea: Inducing Infringement of Personal Liberties Act. With this innovative new legislation, we could prosecute such evildoers as auto, steak knife, and duct tape companies for maliciously producing products that can easily be used by criminals for such heinous crimes as kidnapping! After all, what are a few CDs compared to a human life?
Of course, then everyone would be complaining about "forced upgrades" and "the Microsoft tax".
True. But this service pack has a big sucking sound, coming from the south. It's the hidden tax of Microsoft forcing you to upgrade everything else on your box.
John Q Bigwig shouldn't be installing service packs on his machine, that's the IT department's job.
Okay, I should have said John Q "SmallAndMedium"Wig from a company with less than 25 employess (read: no IT department, except the unfortunate/.er they know)?
baaaa
Re:It's Gone Beyond Science Fiction into Mainstrea
on
Open Source Life?
·
· Score: 1
Their seed ended up on his land through no fault of his, yet they claim they have a right to be paid license fees or to force him to spend his time and money removing corn derived from their migrating seed.
So, what you're saying is that I need to produce some spyware, get it installed on 50 million computers, then start mailing invoices?
To me, this is the compelling argument. Having a service pack break existing applications is broken. That's called a major release, not a service pack. Service packs should leave things pretty much as they are, if only so that John Q. Bigwig doesn't "accidentally" break all of his business critical solitaire games.
I'm not sure you can hold up Classic as a glowing example of backward compatibility. How would your Windows IT department like to enable local admin priveleges just to run old apps (like Classic requires)? How about the fact that Classic locks up OS X every time I run a particular app?
When I got back to the States, I had found that MS purged my two accounts.
Interesting to compare this to the gmail approach, in which all of your old email has value in targeting advertising. I wonder, though, if after leaving a gmail account alone for 8 months, you would spend the next 8 months trying to convince Google's ad targeting engine you weren't that interested in the enlarging your bust size?
Slashdot Mirror
RAW is really huge on disk, but you'll never regret being able to fix that low-exposure shot of the first birthday candle in the dark! Light room works pretty well on local NAS. If you'll be mounting it over WiFi, invest in a really good router. Quality matters when you're wondering why your throughput just fell off a cliff.
If you feel that the company's culture won't be accepting of your needs, run away. It's that acceptance that you need to look for. Don't think that you need to change to fit the existing environment. That's not culture. Is just what the current culture already accepts.
when I memorized the series of POKE commands needed to change the prompt so I could do it at the store.... Ah the memories. :)
That's what it is, after all. I thought Apple was crazy having non-customizable computers in the 80s and 90s. But by the 2k's, it seemed obvious that they included everything that 99% of people needed in a box. Other people are finally realizing there's a consumer electronics niche for computing products. No biggie. "Curated Computers" are in the Smithsonian.
I took both (2 semesters of discrete math, in fact; 3 semesters of traditional math). In my work, primarily in integration and web apps, I find the set theory and discrete math (logic) a lot more useful. However, if you do other things, you might find the "traditional" math more useful. But I wanted to share that in my own curriculum, I was required to take an Algorithms and Data Structures class that covered almost exactly the discrete math topics. I took them at the same time. The A&DS class was (in theory) more practical, but much of the theory was the same. Learning proofs will make your brain hurt (in the "no pain, no gain" sense), but I doubt you need both A&DS and discrete math unless, as others have pointed out, you plan to go for a PhD and go into research.
I had a very personal experience with just this kind of situation, and it ended with my company folding. Here are some tips to make sure the same thing doesn't happen to you: 1) Fail fast. This is ALWAYS rule #1 in a startup. If there are any terms and conditions required for the offer to go through, make sure you understand them and make sure the conditions can be met. Will any of you need to relo? How many of you must be retained and for how long? Are there any "proof points" required for the purchase to go through? It may seem strange, but your goal is to get them to reject you by pushing on any weak parts of the deal. 2) You haven't finished until the check CLEARS. Never, under any circumstances, assume that things will go well. In my experience, we were assured several times by high-ranking members of the acquiring company that everything was great and we had nothing to worry about. Don't believe them. It's business, and if business conditions change before the check clears, you can be sure there's some kind of escape clause in the contract. So, until you've taken the money out of the bank in large denomination bills, the deal isn't over. 3) Forget about your feelings and do what's best for your young business. This can be REALLY hard. It sounds like you're in a similar situation to the one I was in: the large company offers scale and ability to execute that you will spend years building. Your company seems to be so young that there is a lot of risk and uncertainty. But, is your young company experiencing traction? What would the impact be to your business if you are distracted for 2-3 months working through terms and have nothing to show for that time? Have you made it to the point where people understand the value you will bring? In other words, would they miss you if you disappeared? If so, your company may be better served by building those relationships with your current or future customers and generating some "raving fans". HTH
just having installed Silverlight(R)(TM) on my Mac so I could watch NetFlix. I can't imagine doing that to my iPhone, too.
I'm proud that my initial iPhone bills will contribute to this effort. AT&T FTW!
I guess this is what I get for getting one of the first 360s! Stupid bathtub curve...
I keep my 360 in a cabinet under the TV to dull the noise of its massive fans. And since it raises the temperature in there high enough to bake a small cake, I can't imagine having it sitting out so I can actually use the IR remote. Anybody actually have a good experience keeping these things in the living room? Much less trying to watch a movie/show with dialog?
I don't think a "display" is a device that wraps around your hand.
I'll grant you that some large number of activations go through just fine. Mine didn't. I was a new account (no porting issues), and I called Customer Service (and the so-called "Resolution Team") over 10 times. At NO time were the following questions answered:
1) How long will my phone take to activate?
I mean, really, how hard is it to say "Well, people in your situation who began activation at a particular time are activating after 36 hours."
2) (In response to "You just have to wait...") How long should I wait until I call back because there is a problem?
Again, how hard is this to answer? You know (or should know) where I am in the process and how long each step takes. Someone actually told me to call back at midnight. When I did, I got the SAME STORY "Just wait."
In addition, I can't count the number of times I was told "I can't help you until you have a mobile number." To which, I queried, "Can you give me a mobile number?" The answer, in short, was "No!"
Considering that their failure rate is LESS THAN what they expected, at least according to one account from the contractor who actually performed the activations, the customer service aspect of this is abysmal.
What I'm really responding to, though, is the "videophile" comment. The recent EMI/Apple non-DRM, high-quality tracks may point to the future of Apple video offerings. Jobs is in a truly unique position to influence the tech/media industry, with his long history of being a content owner and his new role in Disney. If they can do a deal like the EMI deal, but for video (and people have big enough pipes), then there are big possibilities for Apple TV as a product line (as the iPod has evolved from a single product to an entire line).
Just curious, but does anyone here actually use a mobile wireless service to download distros, patches, WoW updates, etc.? I agree that the marketing is busted here, and my initial reaction was exactly the same. Then I realized they were talking about the "EVDO" wireless data service. I normally don't patch multiple Linux boxen from a random coffee shop or from the passenger seat of my friend's car during a road trip (don't know about the rest of you folks), and I certainly don't d/l movies or run peer-to-peer software for the 6-8 hours it would take to d/l anything remotely large over this network...
I am so happy that someone brought this up. The iDrive isn't bad per se, but it is executed extremely poorly. The first problem I have is part of this design arrogance the previous poster mentioned. I really wish they combined the iDrive with a few discrete controls for contolling the "20%" functions that I (and I assume everybody else) uses. If I just had temperature setting I might be happy (all BMWs have reasonably good automatic climate control; but I am often forced to share the car with my wife, who likes a car about 10F warmer than I do!). I recently perused an updated iDrive, and it's fairly reasonable, but when I'm in "navigation" mode, I don't want to leave it to go to my next radio preset (which I wouldn't have to, since there are steering wheel controls) or to bump the temp up or down a few degrees. I put this in the category of "redundancy is not universally a bad thing." When it comes to UI, I think we have lots of evidence that redundancy can be a really good thing. When a couple of 70+ years can't even drive away in their brand spanking new 745i because they can't figure out how to start the car or to put it in gear, well that's a problem.
Cupholders, eh? During the dot-com hay day, I had an Audi TT. Have you ever seen where they placed the cupholders on those things? It's almost like the German engineers said to each other, "The Americans want their cup holders, do they? We'll give them cup holders, all right!" It's a real piece of check-box marketing. You have to reach back to the rear fire wall to grab your cup. Now, I know, drinking and driving and all that, but this is really my last vice while driving (what's a commute without hot coffee?).
It is truly amazing that products like the iDrive make it out there at all, and even more amazing that it takes a forum like this to point out the obvious flaws in the system. And that most of the improvement in the current system is cosmetic! I mean, if I'm searching my nav system, don't you know that I don't know what category you placed it in? Why do you make me restrict my search to one, specific category! Imagine if Google made you use DMOZ to specify exactly what category you want to search before entering a search term!
Whew. Thanks for the chance to get that off my chest!
I may be crazy, but this pipeline works great if you (1) know how to program a DFA and (2) can rely on some semblance of consistence across various documents from a single source. Majix will also automate Word to convert it to RTF before you start processing it, at least the last time I used it.
The privacy concerns remain, but I think the search vendors will be okay financially once large companies are able to see the potential of such an infrastructure.
Spoken like a customer of the Manhattan Change Bank...
Thanks for reminding me to vote this year. In my state, the registration forms are online, and I expect EVERYONE who gripes on this list about legislation in their democratic country to VOTE against people who would pass such idiotic laws. I'll be waiting at the polls to watch for you! (Wait, that would be illegal, too...)
Or, here's an idea: Inducing Infringement of Personal Liberties Act. With this innovative new legislation, we could prosecute such evildoers as auto, steak knife, and duct tape companies for maliciously producing products that can easily be used by criminals for such heinous crimes as kidnapping! After all, what are a few CDs compared to a human life?
baaaa
Of course, then everyone would be complaining about "forced upgrades" and "the Microsoft tax".
/.er they know)?
True. But this service pack has a big sucking sound, coming from the south. It's the hidden tax of Microsoft forcing you to upgrade everything else on your box.
John Q Bigwig shouldn't be installing service packs on his machine, that's the IT department's job.
Okay, I should have said John Q "SmallAndMedium"Wig from a company with less than 25 employess (read: no IT department, except the unfortunate
baaaa
Their seed ended up on his land through no fault of his, yet they claim they have a right to be paid license fees or to force him to spend his time and money removing corn derived from their migrating seed.
So, what you're saying is that I need to produce some spyware, get it installed on 50 million computers, then start mailing invoices?
baaaa
XP SP2 is a SERVICE PACK.
To me, this is the compelling argument. Having a service pack break existing applications is broken. That's called a major release, not a service pack. Service packs should leave things pretty much as they are, if only so that John Q. Bigwig doesn't "accidentally" break all of his business critical solitaire games.
baaaa
I'm not sure you can hold up Classic as a glowing example of backward compatibility. How would your Windows IT department like to enable local admin priveleges just to run old apps (like Classic requires)? How about the fact that Classic locks up OS X every time I run a particular app?
baaaa
When I got back to the States, I had found that MS purged my two accounts.
Interesting to compare this to the gmail approach, in which all of your old email has value in targeting advertising. I wonder, though, if after leaving a gmail account alone for 8 months, you would spend the next 8 months trying to convince Google's ad targeting engine you weren't that interested in the enlarging your bust size?