I keep seeing people say how much the DS sucks compared to the PSP. But as someone who actually owns -both- I can truthfully say they're just different. They also appeal to different groups. Both ages and interests.
A recent example I have of this, we spent a week in Disney World with my step daughter. Having both we honestly expected her to take the PSP (mmmlumines) away from my wife and I for the week and leave us with the DS. But no, she was glued to the DS screen the entire week and showed no interest in the PSP at all.
I see a lot of people endlessly praising the PSP, but in the end it's not so much better, as different. Certainly more flashy, but not always more fun.
Human guards better? I wouldn't count on it. Not to say biometrics are great, but humans aren't actually that hot at it.
At one company I worked we had a security guard who was notoriously bad at remembering anybody. Seriously, the entire staff would discuss this fact. He saw all of us every single day, but damned if he seemed to be able to remember that fact. He also wasn't too hot at comparing IDs and more than once people on the staff would swap IDs just to test this theory. He always let them in.
Plus, above and beyond people who are just bad at facial recognition... you still have the problem that passwords, biometrics, or even human guards with big guns can all be gotten by if the right person is handed a $10 bill. This fact hasn't changed since ancient times and despite all the technology we throw at it, never will.
Now when is someone going to post binaries for cross-compiling to Mach-O PPC from Sparc's. I've got a bunch of Sun's here I could be using. Granted, I know I could do this myself. But gcc takes so bloody long to compile;)
Specifically, if you load Safari with the Debug menu enabled, and change the user-agent. Then search. You'll see why they don't support Safari yet. The javascript they've got going for the slider doesn't work quite right under Safari.
I'd bet that Safari support will come soon enough, either from Apple fixing whatever their handling of this paticular javascript is, or google simply getting it to work.
Be sure and check out Enigmo, at Pangea
It's a puzzle game, and highly addictive.
Also, it's pretty unoffensive, but involves some good strategy play, Spaceword Ho! at DeltaTao Software
pop-pop is a great knockoff of the classic breakout, at Ambrosia Software
And of course, as people have mentioned, there's always Sim City:) Also Zoo Tycoon, published on the Mac by Aspyr is pretty un-offensive I'd think.
All these companies, with the exception of Aspyr (who publishes a lot of the triple-A ports), have pretty much exclusively G->PG-13 titles. But the ones I mentioned pretty much are lacking anything I can think of that could possibly offend.
Have you ever actually tried to just purchase a set? I know when I was growing up my mother spent many a year trying to buy a set for me. We finally were able to buy a set of World Book encyclopedias, but only because they'd actually sell them to us. At the time Britannica refused to just give my Mom a price. She called, she begged, she pleaded. They always insisted on talking about their loan plans, and would never simply name a price on how much the whole set would cost so she could write a check.
The internet while perhaps not as a reliable source of information, at least rarely turns away my good hard earned money when I'm willing to spend it.
Not sure if the sales tactics have changed, but if they haven't, then they might think about just posting a price for a full bound set, and taking credit cards:) I know that personally I think a home deserves a good set of them to make it livable, but if it's too hard to just get you to sell them to me, then it ain't going to happen. You should work for my money, I shouldn't have to work to give it to you;)
One thing to note here, all three movies you listed came from the Burbank studios. Not the Florida studios, which is what has been completely closed. Florida studio's gave us "Mulan", "Lilo & Stitch", and most recently "Brother Bear". Which granted were not all completely original stories, or at least weren't in Mulan's case, were all absolutely beautiful to watch and actually _did_ have good well written stories.
So while it may be true that some of Disney's animator's deserve to be laid off (Who put a chain-smoker in Atlantis? That person should be shot! Talk about no purpose in the story.) Disney has it seems gone and laid off the wrong set of people.
The most unfortunate thing about this. Is that with VeriSign especially, I find them to be one of the _most_ untrustworthy companies on the planet (How many times have they mis-issued certificates now? And lets not forget all the screwups related to their DNS scams). So the question is, who do you go to for certificates? Can't sign your own because users may feel you're insecure (justifiable or not) and can't trust certificates from the "official" CA's, because... well that's like trusting the goverment to make sure you get all your tax deductions whether you knew they were owed you or not;)
I just really wish I could find an affordable CA that I felt was trustworthy enough themselves as to feel safe making my customers trust their certificates.
Actually, personally the biggest problem with IGN, is that you don't really get anything for the subscription. I know I won't be subscribing again, primarily because I subscribed in the first place to get rid of the ads. All it got me was more ads, in the form of an almost daily spam to my inbox.
It's not paying for internet content that's the problem. It's paying for anything and receiving nothing in return. It's the same reason I don't subscribe to any magazine's any longer. Why pay someone for nothing?
Actually, at the unnamed fortune 10 (yes, 10) company I worked at; and despite the insane amount of money we spent on our support contract with Sun; We rarely received any kind of decent support. Oh we used to years ago, but the past few years (It's been going downhill since the 'Darwin' machines were announced) the support turned to crap. I've had to walk Sun's own engineers through things as simple as: How to identify which disk is out on one of Sun's own array's, to basic use of their own OS. And you can forget the phone support too. Used to be you could call in a ticket and get people who helped. The more recent calls I had to them usually involved me explaining how Solaris worked to people who were still learning english. Sad but true, there was a time when I would have recommended Sun's support, but unless you're living in a box, they've trashed that part of the company too.
All this talk about how it won't really help things like image apps (3D/2D) must be coming from people who don't actually use them much. The biggest gain will be what everyone points out, more than 2GB+ of memory. Which it's not uncommon for those of us who actually use products like Photoshop to have files that are 500MB+ open and to have four, five, six, ten... of those files open at the same time. The great gain? Will be if Apple on their desktops when using these chips actually have the slots for > 2GB of RAM. Down with disk swaping!:)
How does he figure this isn't that much money? As someone who is running a small company, I already pay in the hundreds for what amounts to e-mail. That is, we have our co-lo fees and each employee has i-net access at home. Now why should we pay a penny an e-mail for company communications? Both to fellow employees or to customers? Oh believe me I'd love to see spammers get hit up the wahzoo just as much as the next guy, but why does this suggestion keep coming up as a way. A couple hundred extra a month can literally drive a lot of small companies out of business.
Besides, as spammers have shown, it's not likely to drive them out of business anyway. They'll simply find a workaround of sending so they avoid being traced by the 'tax' servers. Instead of going to the technical effort to implement e-mail 'tax' servers and if the goverment is so eager to help. How about a law that says we as individuals can sue companies running open-relays if we receive spam through that relay.
Yeah, now that one might shut those down real fast...
For a year or so at one point I had an AOL account because I was beta testing some stuff. I managed to have no trouble canceling my account at all, since one day I woke up, tried to log on, and found it simply didn't exist anymore. I still have no idea what happened, but I was simply forgotten:)
Certainly made the choice of staying on or not much easier:)
First and most important, no outside interruptions. Know that's been said before, but it can't be stressed enough.
Other things: Proper music, varies depending on my mood and also what I'm coding. The right thing playing in the background can really stimulate my mind in the proper directions for the code I'm writing.
Natural sleep patterns. A job that makes me show up at 8 and work till 5 is not getting my best performance. I end up groggy and tired throughout the entire day, and never can quite concentrate. On the other side, if I come in a 1-2pm, I can work straight through to 4-5am and still not be all that tired at the end of my day. On the flip side, I know people who are the opposite. They want to be in as early in the morning as possible, starting at 2-3am. The point being it's different for everyone, but if you want your coders at their most alert, then you need to make at least some attempt to let them adjust to their natural schedules. You'll find a few people surprisingly even love 8-5 work.
Flexible hours. 40 hours a week sure. Heck, 60+ hours a week, easy if the enviorment is good and the project is fun. But 40 hours a week may mean coming in at 3pm one day and working till midnight. Just to be in the next at 11am and out by 3pm. Followed by a day of Noon to 5am. Nothing will keep me from zoneing more than the stress of unfinished errands that simply have to be run. The number of times just this year so far, where I had an errand that could only be run between 8 & 5 that I simply had to keep putting off and putting off till the last minute, is staggering. The stress this causes means I'm simply not getting as much done at work as I could. Project managers remember: The point is to complete the project efficiently and correctly, not to keep the chairs warm!
Decent snacks, not just sugary stuff. Again, something that's different for everyone, but that's one of my major interruptions where I work now. The only things I can get to snack on in this building are candy bars, and the only thing available to drink is soda. The water isn't actually drinkable (they've promised to put in filters for months), so that leaves the only option to get non-sweet things being the other buildings. While it gets me out into some fresh air, it's also an interruption that's unneeded. Bottled water even would save a half hour a day minimum in walking between buildings.
Defined objectives. If I know what is wanted of me, it's much easier to slip into the zone and get to work. This makes it very simple on my own projects, but is one of the biggest problems I have with my current employer. I can zone all I want, but if I don't have all the information about what I'm supposed to work towards, then I'm still getting nothing done.
As far as locations go, if I'm working at night I must have _good_ lighting. Specifically easy on the eyes, not too much of it, and absolutely no flourecents(They give me migraines). If working during the day, pretty much same thing. Though I can deal with more light if it's sun light(not direct though).
Comfortable chairs. I can get more work done in an old chair I have at home, than any chair I've ever had at an office. Simply being more comfortable means I need to get up less often.
Privacy. Something with a door that locks. This does not always have to be complete privacy, just the ability to lock out most of the world. At my current employer I once shared a large office with three other people. But we'd keep the door closed and locked. So while I had communication with the rest of my immediate team, we also didn't have to listen to every conversation in the building.
For those working at home this certainly dosen't happen as often, but for office workers, pick an office and leave them there. In the past three years I have had to change desks 5 times. Not only do workers lose at least a day (more if things are setup properly when they get there) in moving. But it takes a bit to adjust to the new enviorment where production isn't as high as it could be. Most of my team has gotten to where we have nothing personal on our desk and basically keep no papers. Three of us to the point of having only our computers on our desk. Simply so that we can pack up and move more quickly when they move our desks yet again. This dosen't lead to a relaxed work enviorment though.
I could probably go on more about things, but this has likely already been boring enough to read. Congrats if you got this far. One last thing to stress, which I again know has been mentioned before. Everyone is different in all of this. While a business likely can't afford to cater to each individual exactly, talking with your coders and finding a middle ground with them on this stuff is a good step in the right direction.
C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner series hits that "due to some miscalculation and unforeseen hardships" pretty well. The series also rates as some of the best SCI-FI (IMHO) I've ever read.
It deals more with "We finally find a planet to live on, but don't get along to well with the current residents", not in an Aliens way, but more realistically the social implications of two intelligent races who simply don't always see eye to eye.
This is the first holiday season in years that I haven't worked either Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or both (The norm). Usually though it's somewhat out of choice, I also haven't had many decent months of December the past few years, so working took my mind off life:) This Dec has just been slow for a change, and the lack of work to do today has just left me bored. Relaxing perhaps, but very little else. To be honest though, working the holidays dosen't bother me normally. I simply don't have anything better to do with my time. Only occasionally am I able to spend the holidays with the people I'd like to, so the rest of the holidays it's simply rather pointless.
I recently had the chance to meet Bruce when he passed through Denver signing his book, and I must say he's just an awsome guy:) Of all the actor's I've met (which granted, isn't all that many) he was the nicest. Surprising the whole slew of people I rounded up to go meet him with me, but not just being polite (which I'd think all actor's should be to their fans), but taking the time with each person to literally sit and talk with them. Asking questions about what they did for a living, or whatever, but getting to _know_ his fans. Very impressive:) He even called a few people on cell phones by request. Certainly not something that would have been required of him, but he did anyway.
Not sure whether it's global warming, or global cooling, or just global weather changes in general. I also have no doubt that they're as much natural changes in weather patterns, as man-made changes. Either way, I do know the weather here in Denver has changed drastically since I was a kid. It used to be during the spring, all spring long, we'd have thunderstorms/hailstorms. Past few years it's been dry as hell. This year we're getting what I'd consider normal spring storms here in the middle of the summer. More than anything it seems as if the weather cycle here is just off a couple of months.
I'm inclined to say that it's whacky, but maybe not hotter. I can barely tell though, as once it hits 90F it's already too hot for me, and I stop counting:)
My retail version of MacOS X works fine with XFree86 and XonX, with one exception, being the keyboard on my PowerbookTi isn't always recognized within X, I had it working, then it wasn't, then it was, but it's something with the enviormental variables for X, most likly something to do with the LOCALE. But when the keyboard does work (I'm never quite sure what all I've set) it works great.
Am I the only person left who remembers playing Wolfenstein games, well before Wolf3d even existed, back on the C64? It's amazing how far the games have come, but even then, I remember those original top down Wolf games to be more fun than Wolf3d ever ended up being to me. Ahh well...
I certainly ran across this quite a lot over the years, it's getting better now (just turned 21) but not quite what I would consider always respectful. On an up point, after three years of hell I'm working with a team now, where I'm one of the Sr. members on the staff, and treated as one throughout the company. Well as much as anyone on our team is ever treated with respect anyway;)
The main reason I have this job is cause my previous job was at this same place (minus a few mergers and buy-out's) and one of the help desk tech's at the time is now a manager and knew me from back when. So wasn't overly concerned about my age.
Before getting this job though, and after having left before. I spent 3 years, from 16 to 19 trying to get a job elsewhere. Got a few short term contracts, but nothing much. I got a lot of consulting agencies literally walking into companies with the catch phrase of "we've got this boy genius with computers, just like Doogie Howser was with medicine!", which, not unexpectedly would frighten companies away. After all, who wants to hire some snotty little boy genius. I can't blame 'em:) I wouldn't want to either. I also in one interview, which I breezed through, was getting along great with the staff I'd be working with, had the recruiter, congratulate me on the good interview, and turn around and attempt to bribe 'em to hire me, right with me standing there. So much for that.
The other main problem was getting recruiters to follow through at all, they frequently didn't, even on jobs I had interviewed on. I'd call, daily to see how an interview went, and the recruiters would literally just never call the company to check.
Only one time did I get turnd down because of what I was asking, and that one, the whole team wanted me, we'd already covered that. Walked in to meet the director, and he had the most obvious look of "I am not gonna hire some kid at a sallery almost as much as mine" on his face. Ahh well:)
On an amusing note, I also went from being an admin (previous job, this job) with a rather large company, to a lot of interviews with people trying to play mentor or surrogate father figure "Really, I think talking to us is a good choice, and will really help your career if you get hired here." As if I'd never held a job before in my life. Anyway, things are definitly picking up now:) Plus outside of current day-job I've managed to get a few contracts personally with companies who frequently have staff younger than I, with more individual responsability to that company. The industry as a whole after the whole dot-com thing, seems to be a bit more aware of younger people providing real resources to.
To all the people who keep asking why anyone would
want Linux on a PDA, here's a few ideas, and why
as soon as my iPAQ shows up, Linux is getting installed:
1. Python can be installed, this would be one of
the most incredible time savers for me, as it would keep me from having to go back to my desk just to whip out scripts.
2. Think, 802.11, and a real telnet client.
3. Development. You _can_ develop for these devices with just a copy of gcc, forget WinCE where every time I see anything about coding for it, it's right along side a long description of all the expensive costs involved.
4. One of my personal pet peeves with WinCE, it's impossible to change the font size as far as I can tell, if you can I certainly haven't found a way.
5. Palm's screens are too small, as that whole lower third is taken up, so even with the IIIc (must have colour, it's not readable without it) the screen size is next to nothing.
All in all, if Apple would release an udpated Newton, I'd buy one in a heartbeat, as it didn't have any of the problems I have with current PDA type devices. Though it still wouldn't address the idea of running Python or whatnot on it, but there were self hosted Newton Development enviorments. The next best thing is certainly not PalmOS, or WinCE, and Linux at elast _I_ can make it into what I want.
One question though? Is dumping a fungi/mold harvesting ground of that size into the ocean really such a good idea? Wouldn't it be better to destroy the thing in space or whatnot, so none of the perhaps mutated and strange molds end up in our oceans? Or maybe we should add this to that list of ways for the world to end...;)
Slashdot Mirror
I keep seeing people say how much the DS sucks compared to the PSP. But as someone who actually owns -both- I can truthfully say they're just different. They also appeal to different groups. Both ages and interests.
A recent example I have of this, we spent a week in Disney World with my step daughter. Having both we honestly expected her to take the PSP (mmmlumines) away from my wife and I for the week and leave us with the DS. But no, she was glued to the DS screen the entire week and showed no interest in the PSP at all.
I see a lot of people endlessly praising the PSP, but in the end it's not so much better, as different. Certainly more flashy, but not always more fun.
Human guards better? I wouldn't count on it.
Not to say biometrics are great, but humans aren't actually that hot at it.
At one company I worked we had a security guard who was notoriously bad at remembering anybody. Seriously, the entire staff would discuss this fact. He saw all of us every single day, but damned if he seemed to be able to remember that fact. He also wasn't too hot at comparing IDs and more than once people on the staff would swap IDs just to test this theory. He always let them in.
Plus, above and beyond people who are just bad at facial recognition... you still have the problem that passwords, biometrics, or even human guards with big guns can all be gotten by if the right person is handed a $10 bill. This fact hasn't changed since ancient times and despite all the technology we throw at it, never will.
Now when is someone going to post binaries for cross-compiling to Mach-O PPC from Sparc's. I've got a bunch of Sun's here I could be using. Granted, I know I could do this myself. But gcc takes so bloody long to compile
Specifically, if you load Safari with the Debug menu enabled, and change the user-agent. Then search. You'll see why they don't support Safari yet. The javascript they've got going for the slider doesn't work quite right under Safari.
I'd bet that Safari support will come soon enough, either from Apple fixing whatever their handling of this paticular javascript is, or google simply getting it to work.
Be sure and check out Enigmo, at Pangea
:) Also Zoo Tycoon, published on the Mac by Aspyr is pretty un-offensive I'd think.
It's a puzzle game, and highly addictive.
Also, it's pretty unoffensive, but involves some good strategy play, Spaceword Ho! at DeltaTao Software
pop-pop is a great knockoff of the classic breakout, at Ambrosia Software
And of course, as people have mentioned, there's always Sim City
All these companies, with the exception of Aspyr (who publishes a lot of the triple-A ports), have pretty much exclusively G->PG-13 titles. But the ones I mentioned pretty much are lacking anything I can think of that could possibly offend.
Have you ever actually tried to just purchase a set? I know when I was growing up my mother spent many a year trying to buy a set for me. We finally were able to buy a set of World Book encyclopedias, but only because they'd actually sell them to us. At the time Britannica refused to just give my Mom a price. She called, she begged, she pleaded. They always insisted on talking about their loan plans, and would never simply name a price on how much the whole set would cost so she could write a check.
:) I know that personally I think a home deserves a good set of them to make it livable, but if it's too hard to just get you to sell them to me, then it ain't going to happen. You should work for my money, I shouldn't have to work to give it to you ;)
The internet while perhaps not as a reliable source of information, at least rarely turns away my good hard earned money when I'm willing to spend it.
Not sure if the sales tactics have changed, but if they haven't, then they might think about just posting a price for a full bound set, and taking credit cards
One thing to note here, all three movies you listed came from the Burbank studios. Not the Florida studios, which is what has been completely closed. Florida studio's gave us "Mulan", "Lilo & Stitch", and most recently "Brother Bear". Which granted were not all completely original stories, or at least weren't in Mulan's case, were all absolutely beautiful to watch and actually _did_ have good well written stories.
So while it may be true that some of Disney's animator's deserve to be laid off (Who put a chain-smoker in Atlantis? That person should be shot! Talk about no purpose in the story.) Disney has it seems gone and laid off the wrong set of people.
The most unfortunate thing about this. Is that with VeriSign especially, I find them to be one of the _most_ untrustworthy companies on the planet (How many times have they mis-issued certificates now? And lets not forget all the screwups related to their DNS scams). So the question is, who do you go to for certificates? Can't sign your own because users may feel you're insecure (justifiable or not) and can't trust certificates from the "official" CA's, because... well that's like trusting the goverment to make sure you get all your tax deductions whether you knew they were owed you or not ;)
I just really wish I could find an affordable CA that I felt was trustworthy enough themselves as to feel safe making my customers trust their certificates.
Actually, personally the biggest problem with IGN, is that you don't really get anything for the subscription. I know I won't be subscribing again, primarily because I subscribed in the first place to get rid of the ads. All it got me was more ads, in the form of an almost daily spam to my inbox.
It's not paying for internet content that's the problem. It's paying for anything and receiving nothing in return. It's the same reason I don't subscribe to any magazine's any longer. Why pay someone for nothing?
Actually, at the unnamed fortune 10 (yes, 10) company I worked at; and despite the insane amount of money we spent on our support contract with Sun; We rarely received any kind of decent support. Oh we used to years ago, but the past few years (It's been going downhill since the 'Darwin' machines were announced) the support turned to crap. I've had to walk Sun's own engineers through things as simple as: How to identify which disk is out on one of Sun's own array's, to basic use of their own OS. And you can forget the phone support too. Used to be you could call in a ticket and get people who helped. The more recent calls I had to them usually involved me explaining how Solaris worked to people who were still learning english. Sad but true, there was a time when I would have recommended Sun's support, but unless you're living in a box, they've trashed that part of the company too.
All this talk about how it won't really help things like image apps (3D/2D) must be coming from people who don't actually use them much. The biggest gain will be what everyone points out, more than 2GB+ of memory. Which it's not uncommon for those of us who actually use products like Photoshop to have files that are 500MB+ open and to have four, five, six, ten... of those files open at the same time. The great gain? Will be if Apple on their desktops when using these chips actually have the slots for > 2GB of RAM. Down with disk swaping! :)
How does he figure this isn't that much money? As someone who is running a small company, I already pay in the hundreds for what amounts to e-mail. That is, we have our co-lo fees and each employee has i-net access at home. Now why should we pay a penny an e-mail for company communications? Both to fellow employees or to customers? Oh believe me I'd love to see spammers get hit up the wahzoo just as much as the next guy, but why does this suggestion keep coming up as a way. A couple hundred extra a month can literally drive a lot of small companies out of business.
Besides, as spammers have shown, it's not likely to drive them out of business anyway. They'll simply find a workaround of sending so they avoid being traced by the 'tax' servers. Instead of going to the technical effort to implement e-mail 'tax' servers and if the goverment is so eager to help. How about a law that says we as individuals can sue companies running open-relays if we receive spam through that relay.
Yeah, now that one might shut those down real fast...
56 actually...
The correct question is: What is 6 times 7?
For a year or so at one point I had an AOL account because I was beta testing some stuff. I managed to have no trouble canceling my account at all, since one day I woke up, tried to log on, and found it simply didn't exist anymore. I still have no idea what happened, but I was simply forgotten
Certainly made the choice of staying on or not much easier
First and most important, no outside interruptions. Know that's been said before, but it can't be stressed enough.
Other things:
Proper music, varies depending on my mood and also what I'm coding. The right thing playing in the background can really stimulate my mind in the proper directions for the code I'm writing.
Natural sleep patterns. A job that makes me show up at 8 and work till 5 is not getting my best performance. I end up groggy and tired throughout the entire day, and never can quite concentrate. On the other side, if I come in a 1-2pm, I can work straight through to 4-5am and still not be all that tired at the end of my day. On the flip side, I know people who are the opposite. They want to be in as early in the morning as possible, starting at 2-3am. The point being it's different for everyone, but if you want your coders at their most alert, then you need to make at least some attempt to let them adjust to their natural schedules. You'll find a few people surprisingly even love 8-5 work.
Flexible hours. 40 hours a week sure. Heck, 60+ hours a week, easy if the enviorment is good and the project is fun. But 40 hours a week may mean coming in at 3pm one day and working till midnight. Just to be in the next at 11am and out by 3pm. Followed by a day of Noon to 5am. Nothing will keep me from zoneing more than the stress of unfinished errands that simply have to be run. The number of times just this year so far, where I had an errand that could only be run between 8 & 5 that I simply had to keep putting off and putting off till the last minute, is staggering. The stress this causes means I'm simply not getting as much done at work as I could. Project managers remember: The point is to complete the project efficiently and correctly, not to keep the chairs warm!
Decent snacks, not just sugary stuff. Again, something that's different for everyone, but that's one of my major interruptions where I work now. The only things I can get to snack on in this building are candy bars, and the only thing available to drink is soda. The water isn't actually drinkable (they've promised to put in filters for months), so that leaves the only option to get non-sweet things being the other buildings. While it gets me out into some fresh air, it's also an interruption that's unneeded. Bottled water even would save a half hour a day minimum in walking between buildings.
Defined objectives. If I know what is wanted of me, it's much easier to slip into the zone and get to work. This makes it very simple on my own projects, but is one of the biggest problems I have with my current employer. I can zone all I want, but if I don't have all the information about what I'm supposed to work towards, then I'm still getting nothing done.
As far as locations go, if I'm working at night I must have _good_ lighting. Specifically easy on the eyes, not too much of it, and absolutely no flourecents(They give me migraines). If working during the day, pretty much same thing. Though I can deal with more light if it's sun light(not direct though).
Comfortable chairs. I can get more work done in an old chair I have at home, than any chair I've ever had at an office. Simply being more comfortable means I need to get up less often.
Privacy. Something with a door that locks. This does not always have to be complete privacy, just the ability to lock out most of the world. At my current employer I once shared a large office with three other people. But we'd keep the door closed and locked. So while I had communication with the rest of my immediate team, we also didn't have to listen to every conversation in the building.
For those working at home this certainly dosen't happen as often, but for office workers, pick an office and leave them there. In the past three years I have had to change desks 5 times. Not only do workers lose at least a day (more if things are setup properly when they get there) in moving. But it takes a bit to adjust to the new enviorment where production isn't as high as it could be. Most of my team has gotten to where we have nothing personal on our desk and basically keep no papers. Three of us to the point of having only our computers on our desk. Simply so that we can pack up and move more quickly when they move our desks yet again. This dosen't lead to a relaxed work enviorment though.
I could probably go on more about things, but this has likely already been boring enough to read. Congrats if you got this far. One last thing to stress, which I again know has been mentioned before. Everyone is different in all of this. While a business likely can't afford to cater to each individual exactly, talking with your coders and finding a middle ground with them on this stuff is a good step in the right direction.
in the previous article about vendor lies? ;)
Roogna
C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner series hits that "due to some miscalculation and unforeseen hardships" pretty well. The series also rates as some of the best SCI-FI (IMHO) I've ever read.
:)
It deals more with "We finally find a planet to live on, but don't get along to well with the current residents", not in an Aliens way, but more realistically the social implications of two intelligent races who simply don't always see eye to eye.
Anyway, worth checking out
This is the first holiday season in years that I haven't worked either Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or both (The norm). Usually though it's somewhat out of choice, I also haven't had many decent months of December the past few years, so working took my mind off life :) This Dec has just been slow for a change, and the lack of work to do today has just left me bored. Relaxing perhaps, but very little else. To be honest though, working the holidays dosen't bother me normally. I simply don't have anything better to do with my time. Only occasionally am I able to spend the holidays with the people I'd like to, so the rest of the holidays it's simply rather pointless.
I recently had the chance to meet Bruce when he passed through Denver signing his book, and I must say he's just an awsome guy :) Of all the actor's I've met (which granted, isn't all that many) he was the nicest. Surprising the whole slew of people I rounded up to go meet him with me, but not just being polite (which I'd think all actor's should be to their fans), but taking the time with each person to literally sit and talk with them. Asking questions about what they did for a living, or whatever, but getting to _know_ his fans. Very impressive :) He even called a few people on cell phones by request. Certainly not something that would have been required of him, but he did anyway.
Not sure whether it's global warming, or global cooling, or just global weather changes in general. I also have no doubt that they're as much natural changes in weather patterns, as man-made changes. Either way, I do know the weather here in Denver has changed drastically since I was a kid. It used to be during the spring, all spring long, we'd have thunderstorms/hailstorms. Past few years it's been dry as hell. This year we're getting what I'd consider normal spring storms here in the middle of the summer. More than anything it seems as if the weather cycle here is just off a couple of months.
:)
I'm inclined to say that it's whacky, but maybe not hotter. I can barely tell though, as once it hits 90F it's already too hot for me, and I stop counting
Roogna
My retail version of MacOS X works fine with XFree86 and XonX, with one exception, being the keyboard on my PowerbookTi isn't always recognized within X, I had it working, then it wasn't, then it was, but it's something with the enviormental variables for X, most likly something to do with the LOCALE. But when the keyboard does work (I'm never quite sure what all I've set) it works great.
Am I the only person left who remembers playing Wolfenstein games, well before Wolf3d even existed, back on the C64? It's amazing how far the games have come, but even then, I remember those original top down Wolf games to be more fun than Wolf3d ever ended up being to me. Ahh well...
I certainly ran across this quite a lot over the years, it's getting better now (just turned 21) but not quite what I would consider always respectful. On an up point, after three years of hell I'm working with a team now, where I'm one of the Sr. members on the staff, and treated as one throughout the company. Well as much as anyone on our team is ever treated with respect anyway ;)
:) I wouldn't want to either. I also in one interview, which I breezed through, was getting along great with the staff I'd be working with, had the recruiter, congratulate me on the good interview, and turn around and attempt to bribe 'em to hire me, right with me standing there. So much for that.
:)
:) Plus outside of current day-job I've managed to get a few contracts personally with companies who frequently have staff younger than I, with more individual responsability to that company. The industry as a whole after the whole dot-com thing, seems to be a bit more aware of younger people providing real resources to.
The main reason I have this job is cause my previous job was at this same place (minus a few mergers and buy-out's) and one of the help desk tech's at the time is now a manager and knew me from back when. So wasn't overly concerned about my age.
Before getting this job though, and after having left before. I spent 3 years, from 16 to 19 trying to get a job elsewhere. Got a few short term contracts, but nothing much. I got a lot of consulting agencies literally walking into companies with the catch phrase of "we've got this boy genius with computers, just like Doogie Howser was with medicine!", which, not unexpectedly would frighten companies away. After all, who wants to hire some snotty little boy genius. I can't blame 'em
The other main problem was getting recruiters to follow through at all, they frequently didn't, even on jobs I had interviewed on. I'd call, daily to see how an interview went, and the recruiters would literally just never call the company to check.
Only one time did I get turnd down because of what I was asking, and that one, the whole team wanted me, we'd already covered that. Walked in to meet the director, and he had the most obvious look of "I am not gonna hire some kid at a sallery almost as much as mine" on his face. Ahh well
On an amusing note, I also went from being an admin (previous job, this job) with a rather large company, to a lot of interviews with people trying to play mentor or surrogate father figure "Really, I think talking to us is a good choice, and will really help your career if you get hired here." As if I'd never held a job before in my life. Anyway, things are definitly picking up now
To all the people who keep asking why anyone would
want Linux on a PDA, here's a few ideas, and why
as soon as my iPAQ shows up, Linux is getting installed:
1. Python can be installed, this would be one of
the most incredible time savers for me, as it would keep me from having to go back to my desk just to whip out scripts.
2. Think, 802.11, and a real telnet client.
3. Development. You _can_ develop for these devices with just a copy of gcc, forget WinCE where every time I see anything about coding for it, it's right along side a long description of all the expensive costs involved.
4. One of my personal pet peeves with WinCE, it's impossible to change the font size as far as I can tell, if you can I certainly haven't found a way.
5. Palm's screens are too small, as that whole lower third is taken up, so even with the IIIc (must have colour, it's not readable without it) the screen size is next to nothing.
All in all, if Apple would release an udpated Newton, I'd buy one in a heartbeat, as it didn't have any of the problems I have with current PDA type devices. Though it still wouldn't address the idea of running Python or whatnot on it, but there were self hosted Newton Development enviorments. The next best thing is certainly not PalmOS, or WinCE, and Linux at elast _I_ can make it into what I want.
One question though? Is dumping a fungi/mold harvesting ground of that size into the ocean really such a good idea? Wouldn't it be better to destroy the thing in space or whatnot, so none of the perhaps mutated and strange molds end up in our oceans? Or maybe we should add this to that list of ways for the world to end... ;)