Thank you for actually bringing up the facts of the case!
Of course, the knee-jerk response to "bloggers are not journalists!" is "some of them are!" The judge did not say that you can't be a blogger and a journalist at the same time. He gave seven examples of evidence that the defendant could have provided to prove that she was a journalist, and apparently she provided none of them. The article seems alarmist in suggesting that she would have had to provide all 7. Even someone that did not go to journalism school and is not employed by a major news outlet should be able to provide "(3) proof of adherence to journalistic standards such as editing, fact-checking, or disclosures of conflicts of interest" if they are going to blast someone in public and then not produce any evidence.
I second this. There is absolutely no reason you need a computer science degree to do web development work. If your work is good, there are people out there who appreciate people with broader experiences.
I may be biased, because I was an English major once upon a time. All of my training has been on the job and in my spare time. Admittedly, I had the advantage of getting started in the mid 90's, when anyone with any interest or aptitude for web development could find gainful employment.
But now I am a partner in a small web development company led by 3 people with humanities degrees. If anything, if we see a resume from someone with a psychology or philosophy degree, we are apt to be more interested, not less. I don't imagine that we are in any way typical, but there are companies like ours out there.
That is not to say that we are idealists. We want to get a sense that you can really do the work, and we're looking for real-world experience. And if you can't deliver or your code is not clean, we'll cut you loose.
I have had a similar experience with my Droid Incredible -- I had to replace it twice. I will say that now that I have a phone that works I'm very happy with it. Kind of soured me on HTC though.
This is an obvious suggestions, since it's the first keyboard that comes up if you search for "ergonomic keyboard". It is really a great all-around keyboard. I bought one a few years ago after having broken my right wrist. It was very painful to type with my wrists rotated inward, and this keyboard allows the wrist to be at just enough of a tilt to make it very comfortable. I can type on a regular keyboard now, but wouldn't think of going back.
For the chair, as others have suggested, don't get a super cushy chair that encourages you to lean back. A simple task chair is best to encourage you to keep proper posture while working. Also as others have suggested, make sure to build frequent breaks into your routine.
Similar to the keyboard, an ergonomic mouse that tilts slightly will help. When my wrist broke, incidentally, I switched to using a left-handed mouse and have also never gone back. The only problem is that there are very few ergonomic mice made for the left hand.
To expand on that, it's Arthurian in that it is a classic hero tale, a retelling of the archtypal hero tale that is seen in virtually all human cultures. Pick up a copy of Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces for more details.
Well put. I'm only 41 but know that project management is not for me. I'm actually part owner of a small web development company, so part of my job is necessarily management, but it's my least favorite part.
You could "lower your expectations" in many ways however. If the OP sticks with project management, that would be lowering his expectations for how much he should enjoy his job. If he follows his interests and goes back to development, he might need to lower his expectations for future earning potential and career growth. On the other hand, a project manager who doesn't enjoy his job is unlikely to go very far, so he's probably better off in all respects.
I've been using Rhapsody for a while now, and am pretty happy with it. I work at my computer constantly and like having music on while I'm programming (it helps me get into the groove). I listen to a lot of music that I'm not inclined to buy. I appreciate being introduced to music that I wouldn't otherwise have known about, and I appreciate the fact that if I hear about a song or an artist I can almost always find it on Rhapsody and listen to it immediately. In other words, I get a lot out of my $6/mo (I should explain that I have a grandfathered account that was transferred from Yahoo Music years ago so my pricing is different from their standard pricing).
So for me, Rhapsody is great, and I have only been thinking about checking out Spotify because of some somewhat minor annoyances with the Rhapsody software (which may or may not be better in Spotify).
The real problem is not that it stays awake to record the programs you want to record, but that it is always recording whether you want it to or not. At least that's the way my Verizon box works. This allows you to turn on the TV, and if you happen to want to watch the current program from the beginning, you can rewind. I have never used this feature, and if I could turn it off I would. It's a huge waste of energy. It would be much better if you could tell it to not record anything (and power down the hard drive) unless it is really "on" or if there is a program you actually scheduled to record.
Surprised nobody has mentioned this yet, but there are many good open source CMS's that allow you to edit your website through browser based tools -- Drupal, Joomla, etc. My company has built our own CMS that allows wysiwyg editing of websites (which I won't plug). The point is, for the long haul and for a lot of reasons a browser-based solution is best. And no matter what happens to an open source project you can always continue to use the code and extend it for as long as you want.
From the consumer point of view "widescreen" sounds better, because it sounds bigger, even though it isn't. There's a reason they don't call it "shortscreen". And if they do actually think about it, it probably makes sense to many people to have a screen with the correct aspect ratio for watching movies -- even if they hardly ever do that.
From the manufacturer's point of view widescreen is better because it is smaller and cheaper to produce. I.e. a 15" widescreen display is smaller than a 15" 4:3 display, but they still get to sell it as a 15" display.
Small correction. When Google first came out, there were no link farms because Google was the first search engine to rank results based on the quantity and quality of links going to sites. That was their great innovation.
I think what they're moving towards is a time when end users don't care about version numbers at all, just like they don't care about the version numbers of websites. I'm sure many websites attach version numbers to development milestones as a way of organizing development. I do this for some websites I work on, but when we launch new features, we never broadcast to the world, "Check out version 8.1 of mysite.com!" If there is an announcement at all, it is focused on the actual features that were added.
Chrome updates automatically and without fanfare, similar to a website. I have lost track of the version number of my version of Chrome, and I don't see anything wrong with that.
The technology is not quite there to build browser-based apps that can adequately replace desktop apps. But that's the whole point of the Chromeless project as I understand it.
I have, in the past year, switched from a desktop email client to Gmail. It is tantalizingly close to being a perfect setup. There are just a few things that don't quite work as they should (better desktop notifications, opening links in my default browser, for instance). If those things were fixed it would be great. Meanwhile, I can switch to another computer and have all my email on the go. If my computer dies, I have not lost anything. And it supports offline use (no 24/7 connection to the web required).
Google "sting" was interesting, but they made more out of it than it was.
But to call Google's experiment click fraud is just as juvenile. The fact is that Google had a really good point. Their "sting" used nonsense words, but they originally noticed something fishy when looking at results for a genuine query: tarsorhaphy, which is a misspelling of tarsorrhaphy. Google recognized the misspelled word, and Bing did not, but still returned a page with the correct spelling as the top result. They apparantly did so by piggy-backing on Google's results. Whether you agree with Google that this is an underhanded practice that should stop or not, Google was well within their rights to point it out.
I agree with you about the performances. The script was mostly good, but it fell into many of the usual melodramatic cliches that make me cringe. How many times have we seen the hero, after finally triumphing over adversity, receive a slow build-up of applause at the end of the movie? It's a very successful formula, but it makes me a little queasy every time I see it.
Honestly. As a web developer who works in the real world with real client demands, I have never worried much about targeting a specific version of the html spec. I use best practices when I can, and hacks when I have to. The real goal is to get a site working for as many users as practical. The sole purpose of a doctype in a web page is to alert browsers such as Firefox and IE to use their "strict" modes rather than their "quirky" modes. There has never been a time when I have been able to rely on writing to a standard and having it work in every browser I need to support, and it's unreasonable to expect that to change any time soon.
When my wife started doing video editing a while ago, I got her a desktop computer with a large harddrive, and I signed her up for the $5/mo Mozy plan. It's a pretty reasonable price, and we've already restored a couple videos she somehow managed to delete accidentally.
You don't need a powerful computer for photos, but it sounds like you do need more disk space. If you don't want to replace your laptop HD, you could get a large external USB HD.
Something else that I do, since I am the one that manages the photos (as opposed to the videos) is I put the photos on my computer and manage them with Picasa. I upload all the latest at a reduced resolution to Picasa Web Albums to share with family, deleting older albums when I get close to the 1GB limit (who wants a lifetime of photos to be public anyway?). And I occasionally sync all my photos over to my wife's computer, so that they get backed up to Mozy too.
I don't know their protocol either, but it kind of makes sense. Probably the first thing a client does when it starts is connect to a supernode and download updated directory information. The client probably doesn't need much from the supernode after that.
From the blog post: "The failure of 25–30% of supernodes in the P2P network resulted in an increased load on the remaining supernodes. While we expect this kind of increase in the instance of a failure, a significant proportion of users were also restarting crashed Windows clients at this time. This massively increased the load as they reconnected to the peer-to-peer cloud. The initial crashes happened just before our usual daily peak-hour (1000 PST/1800 GMT), and very shortly after the initial crash, which resulted in traffic to the supernodes that was about 100 times what would normally be expected at that time of day."
You are ignoring the fact that at one point in time, the latest version of the software was the buggy version. It might actually make sense to have some heterogeneity in the supernodes.
And on your second point, I think you're ignoring the fact that the running supernodes received up to 100 times the expected traffic, so a 100-150% increase would probably not have helped much.
Good points. I would add that I am a techy person, but I might be interested in a very low-cost, light weight, instant-on laptop to take on vacations, where I will be mostly checking email and surfing the web. And if it gets broken or lost, I will not shed a tear. I already use Google Apps, so something like that might make sense for me.
Google may indeed kill ChromeOS and merge it with Android, but they, as a company, are very invested in moving people to the cloud. So they have good reasons to want ChromeOS to succeed. Seems a little early for an autopsy to me.
Agreed. I would like to see internet connectivity treated as a utility, just like my electricity and gas. If the price reflects that actual costs incurred by the ISP, it would be fair for everyone involved. That's a big "if" though.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for actually bringing up the facts of the case!
Of course, the knee-jerk response to "bloggers are not journalists!" is "some of them are!" The judge did not say that you can't be a blogger and a journalist at the same time. He gave seven examples of evidence that the defendant could have provided to prove that she was a journalist, and apparently she provided none of them. The article seems alarmist in suggesting that she would have had to provide all 7. Even someone that did not go to journalism school and is not employed by a major news outlet should be able to provide "(3) proof of adherence to journalistic standards such as editing, fact-checking, or disclosures of conflicts of interest" if they are going to blast someone in public and then not produce any evidence.
I second this. There is absolutely no reason you need a computer science degree to do web development work. If your work is good, there are people out there who appreciate people with broader experiences.
I may be biased, because I was an English major once upon a time. All of my training has been on the job and in my spare time. Admittedly, I had the advantage of getting started in the mid 90's, when anyone with any interest or aptitude for web development could find gainful employment.
But now I am a partner in a small web development company led by 3 people with humanities degrees. If anything, if we see a resume from someone with a psychology or philosophy degree, we are apt to be more interested, not less. I don't imagine that we are in any way typical, but there are companies like ours out there.
That is not to say that we are idealists. We want to get a sense that you can really do the work, and we're looking for real-world experience. And if you can't deliver or your code is not clean, we'll cut you loose.
That's kind of what I thought too, but a quick search shows that we're wrong:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation
I have had a similar experience with my Droid Incredible -- I had to replace it twice. I will say that now that I have a phone that works I'm very happy with it. Kind of soured me on HTC though.
This is an obvious suggestions, since it's the first keyboard that comes up if you search for "ergonomic keyboard". It is really a great all-around keyboard. I bought one a few years ago after having broken my right wrist. It was very painful to type with my wrists rotated inward, and this keyboard allows the wrist to be at just enough of a tilt to make it very comfortable. I can type on a regular keyboard now, but wouldn't think of going back.
For the chair, as others have suggested, don't get a super cushy chair that encourages you to lean back. A simple task chair is best to encourage you to keep proper posture while working. Also as others have suggested, make sure to build frequent breaks into your routine.
Similar to the keyboard, an ergonomic mouse that tilts slightly will help. When my wrist broke, incidentally, I switched to using a left-handed mouse and have also never gone back. The only problem is that there are very few ergonomic mice made for the left hand.
To expand on that, it's Arthurian in that it is a classic hero tale, a retelling of the archtypal hero tale that is seen in virtually all human cultures. Pick up a copy of Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces for more details.
Well put. I'm only 41 but know that project management is not for me. I'm actually part owner of a small web development company, so part of my job is necessarily management, but it's my least favorite part.
You could "lower your expectations" in many ways however. If the OP sticks with project management, that would be lowering his expectations for how much he should enjoy his job. If he follows his interests and goes back to development, he might need to lower his expectations for future earning potential and career growth. On the other hand, a project manager who doesn't enjoy his job is unlikely to go very far, so he's probably better off in all respects.
I've been using Rhapsody for a while now, and am pretty happy with it. I work at my computer constantly and like having music on while I'm programming (it helps me get into the groove). I listen to a lot of music that I'm not inclined to buy. I appreciate being introduced to music that I wouldn't otherwise have known about, and I appreciate the fact that if I hear about a song or an artist I can almost always find it on Rhapsody and listen to it immediately. In other words, I get a lot out of my $6/mo (I should explain that I have a grandfathered account that was transferred from Yahoo Music years ago so my pricing is different from their standard pricing).
So for me, Rhapsody is great, and I have only been thinking about checking out Spotify because of some somewhat minor annoyances with the Rhapsody software (which may or may not be better in Spotify).
The real problem is not that it stays awake to record the programs you want to record, but that it is always recording whether you want it to or not. At least that's the way my Verizon box works. This allows you to turn on the TV, and if you happen to want to watch the current program from the beginning, you can rewind. I have never used this feature, and if I could turn it off I would. It's a huge waste of energy. It would be much better if you could tell it to not record anything (and power down the hard drive) unless it is really "on" or if there is a program you actually scheduled to record.
Surprised nobody has mentioned this yet, but there are many good open source CMS's that allow you to edit your website through browser based tools -- Drupal, Joomla, etc. My company has built our own CMS that allows wysiwyg editing of websites (which I won't plug). The point is, for the long haul and for a lot of reasons a browser-based solution is best. And no matter what happens to an open source project you can always continue to use the code and extend it for as long as you want.
and I feel fine.
From the consumer point of view "widescreen" sounds better, because it sounds bigger, even though it isn't. There's a reason they don't call it "shortscreen". And if they do actually think about it, it probably makes sense to many people to have a screen with the correct aspect ratio for watching movies -- even if they hardly ever do that.
From the manufacturer's point of view widescreen is better because it is smaller and cheaper to produce. I.e. a 15" widescreen display is smaller than a 15" 4:3 display, but they still get to sell it as a 15" display.
Small correction. When Google first came out, there were no link farms because Google was the first search engine to rank results based on the quantity and quality of links going to sites. That was their great innovation.
I think what they're moving towards is a time when end users don't care about version numbers at all, just like they don't care about the version numbers of websites. I'm sure many websites attach version numbers to development milestones as a way of organizing development. I do this for some websites I work on, but when we launch new features, we never broadcast to the world, "Check out version 8.1 of mysite.com!" If there is an announcement at all, it is focused on the actual features that were added.
Chrome updates automatically and without fanfare, similar to a website. I have lost track of the version number of my version of Chrome, and I don't see anything wrong with that.
It's geeksplotation.. if you would stereotype any other human category as much you'd probably be sued to bankrupcy...
Yeah, it really is amazing how every human category other than your own is always treated so much more fairly.
The technology is not quite there to build browser-based apps that can adequately replace desktop apps. But that's the whole point of the Chromeless project as I understand it.
I have, in the past year, switched from a desktop email client to Gmail. It is tantalizingly close to being a perfect setup. There are just a few things that don't quite work as they should (better desktop notifications, opening links in my default browser, for instance). If those things were fixed it would be great. Meanwhile, I can switch to another computer and have all my email on the go. If my computer dies, I have not lost anything. And it supports offline use (no 24/7 connection to the web required).
Okay, I'll get off your lawn now.
...until I read this response.
Google "sting" was interesting, but they made more out of it than it was.
But to call Google's experiment click fraud is just as juvenile. The fact is that Google had a really good point. Their "sting" used nonsense words, but they originally noticed something fishy when looking at results for a genuine query: tarsorhaphy, which is a misspelling of tarsorrhaphy. Google recognized the misspelled word, and Bing did not, but still returned a page with the correct spelling as the top result. They apparantly did so by piggy-backing on Google's results. Whether you agree with Google that this is an underhanded practice that should stop or not, Google was well within their rights to point it out.
I agree with you about the performances. The script was mostly good, but it fell into many of the usual melodramatic cliches that make me cringe. How many times have we seen the hero, after finally triumphing over adversity, receive a slow build-up of applause at the end of the movie? It's a very successful formula, but it makes me a little queasy every time I see it.
Honestly. As a web developer who works in the real world with real client demands, I have never worried much about targeting a specific version of the html spec. I use best practices when I can, and hacks when I have to. The real goal is to get a site working for as many users as practical. The sole purpose of a doctype in a web page is to alert browsers such as Firefox and IE to use their "strict" modes rather than their "quirky" modes. There has never been a time when I have been able to rely on writing to a standard and having it work in every browser I need to support, and it's unreasonable to expect that to change any time soon.
When my wife started doing video editing a while ago, I got her a desktop computer with a large harddrive, and I signed her up for the $5/mo Mozy plan. It's a pretty reasonable price, and we've already restored a couple videos she somehow managed to delete accidentally.
You don't need a powerful computer for photos, but it sounds like you do need more disk space. If you don't want to replace your laptop HD, you could get a large external USB HD.
Something else that I do, since I am the one that manages the photos (as opposed to the videos) is I put the photos on my computer and manage them with Picasa. I upload all the latest at a reduced resolution to Picasa Web Albums to share with family, deleting older albums when I get close to the 1GB limit (who wants a lifetime of photos to be public anyway?). And I occasionally sync all my photos over to my wife's computer, so that they get backed up to Mozy too.
I don't know their protocol either, but it kind of makes sense. Probably the first thing a client does when it starts is connect to a supernode and download updated directory information. The client probably doesn't need much from the supernode after that.
From the blog post:
"The failure of 25–30% of supernodes in the P2P network resulted in an increased load on the remaining supernodes. While we expect this kind of increase in the instance of a failure, a significant proportion of users were also restarting crashed Windows clients at this time. This massively increased the load as they reconnected to the peer-to-peer cloud. The initial crashes happened just before our usual daily peak-hour (1000 PST/1800 GMT), and very shortly after the initial crash, which resulted in traffic to the supernodes that was about 100 times what would normally be expected at that time of day."
You are ignoring the fact that at one point in time, the latest version of the software was the buggy version. It might actually make sense to have some heterogeneity in the supernodes.
And on your second point, I think you're ignoring the fact that the running supernodes received up to 100 times the expected traffic, so a 100-150% increase would probably not have helped much.
Good points. I would add that I am a techy person, but I might be interested in a very low-cost, light weight, instant-on laptop to take on vacations, where I will be mostly checking email and surfing the web. And if it gets broken or lost, I will not shed a tear. I already use Google Apps, so something like that might make sense for me.
Google may indeed kill ChromeOS and merge it with Android, but they, as a company, are very invested in moving people to the cloud. So they have good reasons to want ChromeOS to succeed. Seems a little early for an autopsy to me.
Agreed. I would like to see internet connectivity treated as a utility, just like my electricity and gas. If the price reflects that actual costs incurred by the ISP, it would be fair for everyone involved. That's a big "if" though.