No kidding. Several years ago I was surfing some travel sites for flights (Canada->Europe I think) and found a bunch of reasonable options in the $700 range. For comparison, I decided to call Air Canada (our major carrier) directly to see how their prices compared, eliminating the middle man. They quoted me something like $8000+taxes and fees (I shit you not) for the exact same flight (same flight numbers, etc.) that one of the travel sites listed. I asked the agent if she was joking.
I don't know why those clowns even bothered with a direct service line then. I don't know anyone who's actually paid that much for a flight. But with service like this, it's easy to see why some of these carriers lose credibility with their customers.
Bucking the trend in Canada at least, is little Porter Airlines which flies out of Toronto Island Airport to a handful of other key cities in Canada and the US. They serve tasty, complementary food on real china and in real glassware, offer free beer (500ml cans of the local microbrew), and in the lounge there's selve-serve espresso, drinks, cookies and a huge bank of large-screen iMacs with internet access. All free. Staff are friendly, the terminal and planes are modern and spotless, and flight service is prompt because you're not competing with the traffic at Pearson nearby (incidentally, an airport with the highest, or second highest landing fees in the world). The planes are turboprops, but they are as or more quiet than most jets I fly on. Landing at the island puts you right downtown Toronto. The lounge has an integrated ferry that takes you 100m over to the shore, and there's a free Porter bus to take you the km or so to the main train station and convention centre right downtown.
How much for all this, you may ask? The same or less than paying for Air Canada, our national carrier. Not as cheap as some US carriers, but the great service and less hassle is well worth the fee--especially if you have to do a day trip for business in downtown Toronto.
And we have WestJet for cross-country flights. Another great Canadian airline modelled on Southwest.
There's a young generation-and-a-half-growing up with the baked-in notion that consuming media "legitimately" is costly and a PITA compared to piracy options. As these people grow into more leadership roles in society, we'll start to see a sea-change in how media is consumed. The rise of the Internet was one such sea-change. The baby boomer generation that runs most things today barely figured that one out. But the boomers sure aren't surviving the piracy sea-change. Once the boomers are finally out of power, maybe then we'll start to see some real change in how media is distributed and consumed. These are deeply held cultural habits that tend to require a generation or two of evolution to evolve.
Murdoch would like nothing more than to kill paper (newspaper, books, etc.) and replace it with digital. Pulp and printing equipment are increasingly expensive, and it's no secret he despises the paperworker unions that control his labour costs. Plus he likes the idea of DRM.
I wish I could find the quote of his that sums this up nicely.
Disclaimer: I'm Jordan Smith, Product Marketing Manager at Xandros. I launched Presto at Demo 09 (demo.com) last week. (And what a great experience that was!)
Presto is a simple Windows utility that downloads as an.exe and installs/uninstalls like any other Windows app in XP or Vista. It gives you the option on boot-up of choosing either Windows or Presto. Booting into Presto gives you quick (i.e. sub 10 seconds) access to Firefox, Pidgin and Skype, plus many other apps you can add through presto.cnr.com. In our experience, the aforementioned apps cover the vast majority of quick, online use cases e.g. updating Facebook, checking Gmail, etc. Shutdown is instant.
Presto is not meant to replace Windows. It's not even about Linux. It's about enabling people to quickly, easily and cheaply turn a dusty old computer into a fast, reliable, easy and secure browsing appliance. There's a strong market for this. I've even made a point about stripping out all the visible OS-like stuff because our users don't seem to want or need it. On the contrary: they appreciate the simplicity of Presto.
I'm very interested in getting your feedback on our beta, mainly to identify where we may have gaps in our hardware support. You can sign up for the beta at prestomypc.com. We'll have the beta up on downloads.com and tucows.com on Monday. It's under 500MB (including Open Office, a large chunk of that) and we're working on a way to make the DL less painful.
As always, I'm open to your constructive feedback at jordan.smith(at)xandros.com.
Re. modifications, the short answer is "yes" since that's essentially what we did for Asus. If you'd like, PM me at jordan.smith(at)xandros.com and let's get a better understanding of what you're looking for.
Disclaimer: I'm the product marketing manager for the Xandros desktop that runs on the Eee PC.
I can assure you that this is not an MS stunt. At Xandros we've worked hard with Asus to make the Eee PC easy to use by non-techies. The simplified interface is easy to navigate on a small screen, apps downloaded through the Eee Download capability "just work" in a few clicks without enduring long download times or frequent updates, and there's good interop with Windows. Kids especially find the Eee PC fun and intuitive to use.
Obviously there's a strong techie interest in the platform as well, so I'm interested in the discussion here. Got some constructive suggestions about how you'd like to use your netbook? I'd love to hear them. You can email me at jordan.smith(at)xandros.com.
I've tried to replace the batteries in my el cheapo Samsung phones when they would no longer hold a charge, and guess what? Bell Mobility wanted $75 for the special clip-in battery. It was cheaper to throw out the phones and upgrade to a new model for a small fraction of the price of the battery. It's a total scam by the provider, and it only encourages our mentality that things should be disposable.
Apple's fee here seems like a bargain by comparison.
One thing you'll find after leaving our wealthy culture is just how hard it is for most people in the world to survive. Securing the basics of clean water, food, and shelter in many parts of the world can be a serious challenge that takes most of your time. Lugging around the excess trappings of our wealthy home culture will fast seem pointless, and I think it sends the wrong message about why you're traveling in the first place.
I've spent a good chunk of the past 38 years traveling to or living in over 35 countries. In that time, I've consistently found that the less I bring, the more fun I have because I'm liberated to focus on what's around me instead of what's in my bag. Some of my best trips have been almost completely unplanned, with little more than the clothes on my back, some cash and ID, and a rough idea of where I want to go. The world is changing fast, so I recommend spending more time learning about the things that are about to disappear, than playing with gadgets. There's a lot of utility in carrying a bound notebook and some pencils (pens invariably leak in the heat).
That said, one gadget I've found to be indispensible is an LED headlamp. Next time you have to take a dump in the middle of the night in an unlit village's communal shithole, you'll appreciate being able to see what not to step in. AA batteries are ubiquitous, so I standardize all my gear on them. It may seem obvious to bring a pocket radio, but they too are ubiquitous. The only other gadget I would consider bringing is an inexpensive GPS. Get the cheapest one with the longest battery life. It will be a desirable target for pick-pockets and soldiers at the many checkpoints and searches you're likely to encounter (learn how to bluff your way through these). It probably won't be much use in dense urban settings where you can't get a clear view of the sky.
As for cameras, I used to shoot film but hot climates tend to ruin film. Now I'd recommend a pocket digital like the Canon Powershot series. They run on AA batts and take hundreds of good photos on a charge.
Internet access is also ubiquitous. It's easy to find an internet cafe where you can write a quick message home to family. A USB key might be worth bringing to back up digital photos. Beware that public terminals are probably teeming with as much malware as there were lice in that stained mattress you slept on last night at the hotel/brothel, so figure out out to keep your identity relatively secure, e.g. by using the mouse to copy and paste characters into your login field.
Bottom line is be prepared to have anything and everything stolen from you, and focus your attention on people not gadgets. I've been really lucky and had fantastic experiences wherever I've gone. The people in most places I've been seem to be friendlier and more curious towards foreigners than what one comes to expect in North America. YMMV.
One last suggestion: Look for the book "The World's Most Dangerous Places". The advice is highly entertaining, spot-on, and far more realistic than even the Lonely Planet guides deliver. E.g., in many parts of the world, learning how to identify and avoid land mines is very helpful.
A service bureau will likely give you the best results for the overall effort and cost. Having scanned hundred of archival negs myself, I can say that any level of automation you can come up with is a huge time-saver. I recommend setting up an assembly-line process in a dust-free location for cleaning, scanning, colour-correcting, and handling the negs. Count on at least 5 minutes per neg. After doing the first few dozen yourself, you'll really see why a service bureau is appealing!
The AGFA T1200 is another flatbed which has nice colour and does a good job of large format negs. They've been discontinued for a while, but since they were a "pro" desktop model for graphic designers, you may be able to find one used somewhere. Unfortunately it lacks an infrared channel to "see" through dust and scratches (this is a great feature--my Nikon scanner has it).
For software, I wholly recommend VueScan (Hamrick.com). It's relatively cheap and it brings out the best in almost every imaginable scanner. I then use Photoshop to adjust color levels (it fades over time), adjust contrast and brightness, and sharpen (e.g. Unsharp mask). If your negs are all the same type and vintage, you may be able to batch-process them with good results.
When I worked for a hydrographic company as a young physics student many years ago, one of my assignments was to run a series of sonar scans of the sewage outfall lagoon of a large city on Lake Ontario. I did the runs in a small inflatable Zodiac with an outboard motor. Fortunately I was given a survival suit, although if I'd fallen into that water, I would've preferred to die right away. Besides the usual turds and toilet paper floating around, there were the occasional rotting animal corpses and some of the maintenance workers said they often cleaned aborted fetuses out of the filtration screens. On the shores of the lagoon were washed up tens of thousands of plastic tampon inserters, all in pastel pinks and blues. the maintenance workers called them "beach whistles". Absolutely nothing grew near the lagoon, and one day we noticed that thousands of sea gulls--those hardy beasts!--had died after they poked around the dirt turned over by a bulldozer. Scary stuff.
Anyway, after a few survey runs the outboard motor stalled right when I was in the middle of a large section of open water. I hoisted the prop out of the water and saw that it was completely wound up in dozens of used condoms that had got past the filtration screens. I had to free the prop using my Swiss Army knife. (I later threw away the knife.)
The scariest thing was what I noticed the next morning. The day before, I'd dripped some of the lagoon water on the jeans that I was wearing under my survival suit. Overnight, the liquid had actually burned holes right through the fabric of my jeans, as if mice had gnawed them. I was totally freaked by that and since then I've always wondered what effect the noxious chemicals I probably absorbed that day will have on my long-term health.
...it'll be specially shaped holes in the middle so you'll need the "Sony" hole adaptor that fits only Sony records, etc. Making your own adaptor will violate the DMCA, because after all, inserting it requires you to use your DIGITS and you're working around a DRM scheme...
According to a recent survey by Deloitte (no ref handy), the typical U.S. company spends almost fifty times as much on selecting employees as they invest annually on developing them once they join the organization.
The problem is, if you want to attract and retain the best employees, focusing on selection and compensation is the wrong approach. It doesn't address the issue of employee engagement, which is key to things like attracting and retaining talent. Companies need to instead focus on developing their employees. An employee who's engaged in their work because their employer strives to make the work interesting, challenging, and relevant to the success of the overall business is much more likely to do a better job and stay with the company over the long term. They also tend to speak well of the place and this helps to attract other good candidates. Everyone wins.
Unfortunately, most HR departments don't understand that the real driver of employee engagement--and all the benefits it brings, like employee and customer attraction and retention, and higher bottom-line profitability--is organizational culture. For instance, recent employee satisfaction surveys from across many industries that I've seen show that compensation is rarely among the top five motivators for why someone stays in a job. Yet compensation is still one of the big levers companies try to pull when attracting and retaining staff.
All this is to say that yes, if some interviewer pulled a "test" stunt on me like your programming assignment, I'd tell 'em to fuck off too. Their approach reflects an organizational culture that I strongly suspect would not enable me to grow and develop in a meaningful way over time in the company. That's how they try to impress me in an interview? Interviews work both ways. Given the growing skills shortage in North America, I think there are many other fine opportunties to consider instead.
Nat Geo magazine had a great feature article on this about a year ago.
Go look at how coal is obtained some time. Coal formation are often like a thick blanket draped over large areas, covered with pesky overburden like hills, forests, towns, and rivers. To get to the coal, first you need to strip away the overburden.
My understanding is that most coal formations in the U.S. require extensive removal over overburden to access. In the southeast, whole mountains have been leveled and valleys filled in with waste material in the quest to reveal coal. The moved material is often unstable and prone to slides, it changes natural watershed patterns, it releases silts and toxic minerals into the watershed (a common mining-related problem), and it just plain disrupts entire ecosystems.
So I'd hardly call coal a centralized problem. We need to look at the whole picture, including the inconvient bits.
I reckon that both China and India are on the verge of entering a golden age of "garage invention" far more influential to world history than the one North Americans enjoyed over the past century. They also have the luxury of access to all the important technologies, processes, and ideas that western nations have been outsourcing to Asia for the past decade plus.
Essentially, western nations have done a great job showing Asians the wonders of garage-style innovation (I'm thinking of Silicon Valley, etc.). However, China and India are not yet extensively fettered by the complex (and basically greed-driven) legal/IP issues that are stifling western nations' abilities (especially those of Americans) to bring innovation to light. Asians can and do innovate with impunity, and the sheer volume of population in a relatively high concentration of access to technology greatly increases the likelihood of impressive results.
The real unknown is whether Asians can innovate themselves out of a massive societal collapse caused by unprecedented environmental impact, before the impact is irreversible. Human societies have a poor record of this. (See Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" for details.) Of course, they could always take raw resources from elsewhere (e.g. Canada), or move there to take them. Basic resources like clean and plentiful drinking water form the foundation of any successful society.
The western world (especially North Americans) would be foolish and naive to think that 2/5 of the world's population (i.e. China, India) would give a damn about another country's IP laws if those laws stood in the way of a valuable societal advancement. Laws are merely social conventions. Wars break these conventions, often because essential resources (food, water, land, mates, security, etc.) are somehow lacking. And there's no end to innovation--legal or not--when basic survival is at stake.
None of my comments are meant as any kind of flamebait. My point is that humans can and will innovate to ensure their survival. At this time in history, there seems to be a much greater motivation for humans in Asia to innovate than there is in North America, for instance. In North America, standards of living are generally much higher and this tends to reduce the motivation to be resourceful. When resourcefulness is not perceived to be needed for survival, greed (i.e. IP laws, copyright, etc.) becomes an "affordable" luxury.
As an avid rock-climber and someone who often works with my hands (machining parts, cutting glass), my fingertips are masses of cuts and abrasions. Fingerprint just sensors don't work with me. I'll really be out of luck for mass-market laptops if there's a broad industry trend towards this type of DRM. What a stupid idea, IMO.
Anyone who's worked on a farm (like the vast majority of the population did in North America 100 years ago) would realize that farmers needed a diverse and surprisingly sophisticated knowledge of many subjects to survive: animal husbandry, veterinary skills, crop lifecycles, hunting, preserving meat/fruits/vegetables, blacksmithing, carpentry, etc. And it wasn't mere craft--you needed to know *when* to use certain skills. Since time and resources were precious, getting it wrong the first time could seriously reduce your chances of survival.
What saddens me these days is my society's increasing disinterest in and lack of respect for the practice of farming. We seem to have little concept of where our food comes from. Heck, I live in a rural community, and even here there are people who don't know that the cling-wrapped chicken at the grocery store is the same thing that goes "cluck-cluck" in a barnyard. Amazing. Worse, these same types of people are taking our precious remaining arable land and turning it into tract housing. Where's the outrage about that? Where I live in Canada, we don't have a lot of options for where we can grow food (the Canadian Shield is unfarmable for the most part) and most of what we eat is trucked in from many thousands of kilometres away. How sustainable is that in the long term?
Yes, technology will always advance and we will need to learn new things as our society evolves and grows. But at the root of it all, we're still animals that need to eat, breathe, etc. You'd think that the knowledge of how to acquire food and sustain ourselves in harmony with our environment would be important to everyone.
"It's strange, because a few years ago I would have thought something like KDE or Mac-OSX would have been the MS-killer,"
Interesting point.
As MS is increasingly commoditized downmarket by niche players like Apple or KDE with more compelling offerings, the only thing MS will be able to compete on is price--and that practice won't sustain their current business model in the long term. MS's inability to truly innovate will be their downfall--no need for an external killer. The smaller players can take risks that MS can't contemplate because MS has so much more to lose. The smaller players aren't competing with MS for outright world domination of everything.
I get the strong sense lately that although Microsoft still wins battles they seems to have turned the corner towards losing the bigger war. It's hard to be innovative at *everything* when you're big and the market evolves faster than you can respond in so many areas. It's like the resurgence of small boutique retailers who are winning back customers from the big box stores. Sometimes the value of having your real needs understood and met with thoughtful, personalized product or service trumps price or ubiquity. Put another way, if you chronically disrespect the customer, they will eventually seek to drop you as soon as a viable alternative emerges.
Slashdot Mirror
No kidding. Several years ago I was surfing some travel sites for flights (Canada->Europe I think) and found a bunch of reasonable options in the $700 range. For comparison, I decided to call Air Canada (our major carrier) directly to see how their prices compared, eliminating the middle man. They quoted me something like $8000+taxes and fees (I shit you not) for the exact same flight (same flight numbers, etc.) that one of the travel sites listed. I asked the agent if she was joking.
I don't know why those clowns even bothered with a direct service line then. I don't know anyone who's actually paid that much for a flight. But with service like this, it's easy to see why some of these carriers lose credibility with their customers.
Bucking the trend in Canada at least, is little Porter Airlines which flies out of Toronto Island Airport to a handful of other key cities in Canada and the US. They serve tasty, complementary food on real china and in real glassware, offer free beer (500ml cans of the local microbrew), and in the lounge there's selve-serve espresso, drinks, cookies and a huge bank of large-screen iMacs with internet access. All free. Staff are friendly, the terminal and planes are modern and spotless, and flight service is prompt because you're not competing with the traffic at Pearson nearby (incidentally, an airport with the highest, or second highest landing fees in the world). The planes are turboprops, but they are as or more quiet than most jets I fly on. Landing at the island puts you right downtown Toronto. The lounge has an integrated ferry that takes you 100m over to the shore, and there's a free Porter bus to take you the km or so to the main train station and convention centre right downtown.
How much for all this, you may ask? The same or less than paying for Air Canada, our national carrier. Not as cheap as some US carriers, but the great service and less hassle is well worth the fee--especially if you have to do a day trip for business in downtown Toronto.
And we have WestJet for cross-country flights. Another great Canadian airline modelled on Southwest.
There's a young generation-and-a-half-growing up with the baked-in notion that consuming media "legitimately" is costly and a PITA compared to piracy options. As these people grow into more leadership roles in society, we'll start to see a sea-change in how media is consumed. The rise of the Internet was one such sea-change. The baby boomer generation that runs most things today barely figured that one out. But the boomers sure aren't surviving the piracy sea-change. Once the boomers are finally out of power, maybe then we'll start to see some real change in how media is distributed and consumed. These are deeply held cultural habits that tend to require a generation or two of evolution to evolve.
Murdoch would like nothing more than to kill paper (newspaper, books, etc.) and replace it with digital. Pulp and printing equipment are increasingly expensive, and it's no secret he despises the paperworker unions that control his labour costs. Plus he likes the idea of DRM.
I wish I could find the quote of his that sums this up nicely.
Disclaimer: I'm Jordan Smith, Product Marketing Manager at Xandros. I launched Presto at Demo 09 (demo.com) last week. (And what a great experience that was!)
Presto is a simple Windows utility that downloads as an .exe and installs/uninstalls like any other Windows app in XP or Vista. It gives you the option on boot-up of choosing either Windows or Presto. Booting into Presto gives you quick (i.e. sub 10 seconds) access to Firefox, Pidgin and Skype, plus many other apps you can add through presto.cnr.com. In our experience, the aforementioned apps cover the vast majority of quick, online use cases e.g. updating Facebook, checking Gmail, etc. Shutdown is instant.
Presto is not meant to replace Windows. It's not even about Linux. It's about enabling people to quickly, easily and cheaply turn a dusty old computer into a fast, reliable, easy and secure browsing appliance. There's a strong market for this. I've even made a point about stripping out all the visible OS-like stuff because our users don't seem to want or need it. On the contrary: they appreciate the simplicity of Presto.
I'm very interested in getting your feedback on our beta, mainly to identify where we may have gaps in our hardware support. You can sign up for the beta at prestomypc.com. We'll have the beta up on downloads.com and tucows.com on Monday. It's under 500MB (including Open Office, a large chunk of that) and we're working on a way to make the DL less painful.
As always, I'm open to your constructive feedback at jordan.smith(at)xandros.com.
Thanks!
Re. modifications, the short answer is "yes" since that's essentially what we did for Asus. If you'd like, PM me at jordan.smith(at)xandros.com and let's get a better understanding of what you're looking for.
Jordan
All great feedback--thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. I'll pass them on to the appropriate people.
Jordan
Disclaimer: I'm the product marketing manager for the Xandros desktop that runs on the Eee PC.
I can assure you that this is not an MS stunt. At Xandros we've worked hard with Asus to make the Eee PC easy to use by non-techies. The simplified interface is easy to navigate on a small screen, apps downloaded through the Eee Download capability "just work" in a few clicks without enduring long download times or frequent updates, and there's good interop with Windows. Kids especially find the Eee PC fun and intuitive to use.
Obviously there's a strong techie interest in the platform as well, so I'm interested in the discussion here. Got some constructive suggestions about how you'd like to use your netbook? I'd love to hear them. You can email me at jordan.smith(at)xandros.com.
Thanks!
Jordan
I've tried to replace the batteries in my el cheapo Samsung phones when they would no longer hold a charge, and guess what? Bell Mobility wanted $75 for the special clip-in battery. It was cheaper to throw out the phones and upgrade to a new model for a small fraction of the price of the battery. It's a total scam by the provider, and it only encourages our mentality that things should be disposable. Apple's fee here seems like a bargain by comparison.
One thing you'll find after leaving our wealthy culture is just how hard it is for most people in the world to survive. Securing the basics of clean water, food, and shelter in many parts of the world can be a serious challenge that takes most of your time. Lugging around the excess trappings of our wealthy home culture will fast seem pointless, and I think it sends the wrong message about why you're traveling in the first place.
I've spent a good chunk of the past 38 years traveling to or living in over 35 countries. In that time, I've consistently found that the less I bring, the more fun I have because I'm liberated to focus on what's around me instead of what's in my bag. Some of my best trips have been almost completely unplanned, with little more than the clothes on my back, some cash and ID, and a rough idea of where I want to go. The world is changing fast, so I recommend spending more time learning about the things that are about to disappear, than playing with gadgets. There's a lot of utility in carrying a bound notebook and some pencils (pens invariably leak in the heat).
That said, one gadget I've found to be indispensible is an LED headlamp. Next time you have to take a dump in the middle of the night in an unlit village's communal shithole, you'll appreciate being able to see what not to step in. AA batteries are ubiquitous, so I standardize all my gear on them. It may seem obvious to bring a pocket radio, but they too are ubiquitous. The only other gadget I would consider bringing is an inexpensive GPS. Get the cheapest one with the longest battery life. It will be a desirable target for pick-pockets and soldiers at the many checkpoints and searches you're likely to encounter (learn how to bluff your way through these). It probably won't be much use in dense urban settings where you can't get a clear view of the sky.
As for cameras, I used to shoot film but hot climates tend to ruin film. Now I'd recommend a pocket digital like the Canon Powershot series. They run on AA batts and take hundreds of good photos on a charge.
Internet access is also ubiquitous. It's easy to find an internet cafe where you can write a quick message home to family. A USB key might be worth bringing to back up digital photos. Beware that public terminals are probably teeming with as much malware as there were lice in that stained mattress you slept on last night at the hotel/brothel, so figure out out to keep your identity relatively secure, e.g. by using the mouse to copy and paste characters into your login field.
Bottom line is be prepared to have anything and everything stolen from you, and focus your attention on people not gadgets. I've been really lucky and had fantastic experiences wherever I've gone. The people in most places I've been seem to be friendlier and more curious towards foreigners than what one comes to expect in North America. YMMV.
One last suggestion: Look for the book "The World's Most Dangerous Places". The advice is highly entertaining, spot-on, and far more realistic than even the Lonely Planet guides deliver. E.g., in many parts of the world, learning how to identify and avoid land mines is very helpful.
A service bureau will likely give you the best results for the overall effort and cost. Having scanned hundred of archival negs myself, I can say that any level of automation you can come up with is a huge time-saver. I recommend setting up an assembly-line process in a dust-free location for cleaning, scanning, colour-correcting, and handling the negs. Count on at least 5 minutes per neg. After doing the first few dozen yourself, you'll really see why a service bureau is appealing!
The AGFA T1200 is another flatbed which has nice colour and does a good job of large format negs. They've been discontinued for a while, but since they were a "pro" desktop model for graphic designers, you may be able to find one used somewhere. Unfortunately it lacks an infrared channel to "see" through dust and scratches (this is a great feature--my Nikon scanner has it).
For software, I wholly recommend VueScan (Hamrick.com). It's relatively cheap and it brings out the best in almost every imaginable scanner. I then use Photoshop to adjust color levels (it fades over time), adjust contrast and brightness, and sharpen (e.g. Unsharp mask). If your negs are all the same type and vintage, you may be able to batch-process them with good results.
When I worked for a hydrographic company as a young physics student many years ago, one of my assignments was to run a series of sonar scans of the sewage outfall lagoon of a large city on Lake Ontario. I did the runs in a small inflatable Zodiac with an outboard motor. Fortunately I was given a survival suit, although if I'd fallen into that water, I would've preferred to die right away. Besides the usual turds and toilet paper floating around, there were the occasional rotting animal corpses and some of the maintenance workers said they often cleaned aborted fetuses out of the filtration screens. On the shores of the lagoon were washed up tens of thousands of plastic tampon inserters, all in pastel pinks and blues. the maintenance workers called them "beach whistles". Absolutely nothing grew near the lagoon, and one day we noticed that thousands of sea gulls--those hardy beasts!--had died after they poked around the dirt turned over by a bulldozer. Scary stuff.
Anyway, after a few survey runs the outboard motor stalled right when I was in the middle of a large section of open water. I hoisted the prop out of the water and saw that it was completely wound up in dozens of used condoms that had got past the filtration screens. I had to free the prop using my Swiss Army knife. (I later threw away the knife.)
The scariest thing was what I noticed the next morning. The day before, I'd dripped some of the lagoon water on the jeans that I was wearing under my survival suit. Overnight, the liquid had actually burned holes right through the fabric of my jeans, as if mice had gnawed them. I was totally freaked by that and since then I've always wondered what effect the noxious chemicals I probably absorbed that day will have on my long-term health.
...it'll be specially shaped holes in the middle so you'll need the "Sony" hole adaptor that fits only Sony records, etc. Making your own adaptor will violate the DMCA, because after all, inserting it requires you to use your DIGITS and you're working around a DRM scheme...
According to a recent survey by Deloitte (no ref handy), the typical U.S. company spends almost fifty times as much on selecting employees as they invest annually on developing them once they join the organization.
The problem is, if you want to attract and retain the best employees, focusing on selection and compensation is the wrong approach. It doesn't address the issue of employee engagement, which is key to things like attracting and retaining talent. Companies need to instead focus on developing their employees. An employee who's engaged in their work because their employer strives to make the work interesting, challenging, and relevant to the success of the overall business is much more likely to do a better job and stay with the company over the long term. They also tend to speak well of the place and this helps to attract other good candidates. Everyone wins.
Unfortunately, most HR departments don't understand that the real driver of employee engagement--and all the benefits it brings, like employee and customer attraction and retention, and higher bottom-line profitability--is organizational culture. For instance, recent employee satisfaction surveys from across many industries that I've seen show that compensation is rarely among the top five motivators for why someone stays in a job. Yet compensation is still one of the big levers companies try to pull when attracting and retaining staff.
All this is to say that yes, if some interviewer pulled a "test" stunt on me like your programming assignment, I'd tell 'em to fuck off too. Their approach reflects an organizational culture that I strongly suspect would not enable me to grow and develop in a meaningful way over time in the company. That's how they try to impress me in an interview? Interviews work both ways. Given the growing skills shortage in North America, I think there are many other fine opportunties to consider instead.
Nat Geo magazine had a great feature article on this about a year ago.
Go look at how coal is obtained some time. Coal formation are often like a thick blanket draped over large areas, covered with pesky overburden like hills, forests, towns, and rivers. To get to the coal, first you need to strip away the overburden.
My understanding is that most coal formations in the U.S. require extensive removal over overburden to access. In the southeast, whole mountains have been leveled and valleys filled in with waste material in the quest to reveal coal. The moved material is often unstable and prone to slides, it changes natural watershed patterns, it releases silts and toxic minerals into the watershed (a common mining-related problem), and it just plain disrupts entire ecosystems.
So I'd hardly call coal a centralized problem. We need to look at the whole picture, including the inconvient bits.
Lemme see... *glass* elevator, it *froze*... must be running Windows!!
I reckon that both China and India are on the verge of entering a golden age of "garage invention" far more influential to world history than the one North Americans enjoyed over the past century. They also have the luxury of access to all the important technologies, processes, and ideas that western nations have been outsourcing to Asia for the past decade plus.
Essentially, western nations have done a great job showing Asians the wonders of garage-style innovation (I'm thinking of Silicon Valley, etc.). However, China and India are not yet extensively fettered by the complex (and basically greed-driven) legal/IP issues that are stifling western nations' abilities (especially those of Americans) to bring innovation to light. Asians can and do innovate with impunity, and the sheer volume of population in a relatively high concentration of access to technology greatly increases the likelihood of impressive results.
The real unknown is whether Asians can innovate themselves out of a massive societal collapse caused by unprecedented environmental impact, before the impact is irreversible. Human societies have a poor record of this. (See Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" for details.) Of course, they could always take raw resources from elsewhere (e.g. Canada), or move there to take them. Basic resources like clean and plentiful drinking water form the foundation of any successful society.
The western world (especially North Americans) would be foolish and naive to think that 2/5 of the world's population (i.e. China, India) would give a damn about another country's IP laws if those laws stood in the way of a valuable societal advancement. Laws are merely social conventions. Wars break these conventions, often because essential resources (food, water, land, mates, security, etc.) are somehow lacking. And there's no end to innovation--legal or not--when basic survival is at stake.
None of my comments are meant as any kind of flamebait. My point is that humans can and will innovate to ensure their survival. At this time in history, there seems to be a much greater motivation for humans in Asia to innovate than there is in North America, for instance. In North America, standards of living are generally much higher and this tends to reduce the motivation to be resourceful. When resourcefulness is not perceived to be needed for survival, greed (i.e. IP laws, copyright, etc.) becomes an "affordable" luxury.
As an avid rock-climber and someone who often works with my hands (machining parts, cutting glass), my fingertips are masses of cuts and abrasions. Fingerprint just sensors don't work with me. I'll really be out of luck for mass-market laptops if there's a broad industry trend towards this type of DRM. What a stupid idea, IMO.
Anyone who's worked on a farm (like the vast majority of the population did in North America 100 years ago) would realize that farmers needed a diverse and surprisingly sophisticated knowledge of many subjects to survive: animal husbandry, veterinary skills, crop lifecycles, hunting, preserving meat/fruits/vegetables, blacksmithing, carpentry, etc. And it wasn't mere craft--you needed to know *when* to use certain skills. Since time and resources were precious, getting it wrong the first time could seriously reduce your chances of survival.
What saddens me these days is my society's increasing disinterest in and lack of respect for the practice of farming. We seem to have little concept of where our food comes from. Heck, I live in a rural community, and even here there are people who don't know that the cling-wrapped chicken at the grocery store is the same thing that goes "cluck-cluck" in a barnyard. Amazing. Worse, these same types of people are taking our precious remaining arable land and turning it into tract housing. Where's the outrage about that? Where I live in Canada, we don't have a lot of options for where we can grow food (the Canadian Shield is unfarmable for the most part) and most of what we eat is trucked in from many thousands of kilometres away. How sustainable is that in the long term?
Yes, technology will always advance and we will need to learn new things as our society evolves and grows. But at the root of it all, we're still animals that need to eat, breathe, etc. You'd think that the knowledge of how to acquire food and sustain ourselves in harmony with our environment would be important to everyone.
My neighbour has this laser rig, and he uses it to engrave *and* cut wood and metal. See www.mosquitobiteplanes.com for results.
"It's strange, because a few years ago I would have thought something like KDE or Mac-OSX would have been the MS-killer,"
Interesting point.
As MS is increasingly commoditized downmarket by niche players like Apple or KDE with more compelling offerings, the only thing MS will be able to compete on is price--and that practice won't sustain their current business model in the long term. MS's inability to truly innovate will be their downfall--no need for an external killer. The smaller players can take risks that MS can't contemplate because MS has so much more to lose. The smaller players aren't competing with MS for outright world domination of everything.
I get the strong sense lately that although Microsoft still wins battles they seems to have turned the corner towards losing the bigger war. It's hard to be innovative at *everything* when you're big and the market evolves faster than you can respond in so many areas. It's like the resurgence of small boutique retailers who are winning back customers from the big box stores. Sometimes the value of having your real needs understood and met with thoughtful, personalized product or service trumps price or ubiquity. Put another way, if you chronically disrespect the customer, they will eventually seek to drop you as soon as a viable alternative emerges.
http://www.tronguy.net/images/headshot-web.jpg
It's just not like it used to be.