I agree whole-heartly. I was a company commander of an reserve Army unit that was mobilized recently. I always ask my soldiers about their jobs (basic stuff that I don't know) and it does two things:
1) They see I am interested in what they do 2) I get to see how hard their jobs really are
If you are managing computer programmers/sys admins and they don't get to SEE you appreciate them and their hard work and show them you are interested in how they perform, then you're in for a world of hurt. If it's all about ego and losing face then you are not a good manager. Except in Lord of the Flies, that's just not as big a deal as people think it is. Even in the military, we're learning that "never admitting wrongTM" is NOT a force multiplier.
As an aside, from what I have seen, women managers and officers don't have these ego problem as frequently when dealing with subordinates. I've observed that they are more likely to just say, "show me." The soldier will show them, and then she will know how to do it. Next time it needs to be done, she can appreciate how tough it is, and how competent her people are. She'll be so impressed, in fact, that she'll move heaven and earth to keep distractions/bureaucracy/morons from impeding her soldier's progress. This should be tatooed on the heads of all PHB's.
Why is this so hard to understand? Engineers are failure oriented. We look for ways to break stuff, and then plan to mitigate its breakage. We always look at the worst case scenario. I am an engineer, and I know the words, "Yeah, it won't break" have never passed my lips unless accompanied with several volumes of caveats.
Face it folks, engineers are sky-is-falling-folks. We could stand to filter ourselves a little bit to gain some credibility.
"Yeah, the engineers say something bad is going to happen, but they say that every day. Shall we launch, then? Okay, good to go."
I mean, if you say every single day, the world is going to end, and then one day it actually does, did you, in fact, predict it?
*Falls out of chair laughing... wipes tear from eye*
Have you ever BEEN to Puerto Rico? Geek utopia it ain't, bub.
If the Partido Independentista Puertorriqueno (PIP) gets in power, we're all through down here. Of that much you can be sure... just another Greater Antilles socialist/communist panacea/worker's paradise. You all know how well THAT turned out.
Patton said it best "Good tactics can save even the worst strategy. Bad tactics will destroy even the best strategy."
Business plan = Strategy Execution = Tactics
The dot com's failed because they were mostly formed out of greed by untalented opportunists with an eye on getting rich.
Scott cares more about creating something real, products, employment, and true technology... something to which we geeks should show a little homage.
So if you are going to start a company, it's not your business plan that's going to save your ass. It's the people with whom you surround yourself, the quality, dedicated, morally straight folks that care about the business and its success.
Besides you're going to throw out your business plan in the first year anyway.
I don't care what everyone else does with their boxes. I know mine are locked up tight. I also know that there is no mystery about how tight they are and how someone would have to get in. I KNOW what's going on. With IIS, you've got to clicky-click-click until you hit the default page and it shows up. After that, it's a big clicky-click-mystery.
These stats don't mean diddly to me, I know my boxes are tight, but all IIS admins can say is, "Well, I've applied all the patches."
Now, back to reading/posting on Slashdot, instead of downloading crap from windowsupdate.
I can just hear the Dell people's frustration at this guy.
"Geez, it's just a simple 'I agree' button. Just click on the damn thing. Why are you so up in arms about it?"
"If it's not such a big deal why the hell did you put it there? I mean, you went through the effort, didn't you? It obviously serves some purpose. Telling me that it doesn't mean anything, and that I should just suck it up and click away, sort of undermines your position doesn't it?"
I get this from time to time on shit that someone wants me to initial or sign. I refuse, and they ask why I am making such a big deal, it doesn't mean ANYTHING. Well then why do you want my signature? Hmmmm?
It's just form over substance, and it erodes civil rights. It makes legal enforcement subjective. Say for example, everybody is expected to sign or click or whatever, leaving any company or law enforcement body to apply the law when and where they see fit, because "everybody's guilty."
In court they can produce the "proof" and ask, "Is this your signature?"
Georgy, you are obviouly cute and young. How does this qualify you to be governor of the 5th largest economy in the world? You say you're intelligent? Okay, I'll grant you that, but you will be working with legislators, judges, and politicians that could be your father. How do you get them to take you seriously?
Bah, do you fire the baseball players when they have a bad season? No, you get yourself a new manager. He'll make some changes that he thinks will increase the chances for team success, just like a president/governor. The guy in charge, his fault or not, has got to take responsibility and move aside. 3 bad seasons in a row? Yer outa there. New guy comes in, doesn't make many personnel changes, and bam, team makes the playoffs. So his players weren't actually crap. It's about leadership style, work environment, and how well he compliments the talents and tempraments of his players. Or sometimes, just dumb luck.
When things are going poorly, the work environment becomes poisoned, so much so that it is nearly impossible to turn around. In cases like California he's (Davis) has just got to take it on the chin and suck it up. Maybe someone'll pick him to be the new head of the RIAA or something.
And when baseball teams do well? Well the managers get the kudos: "manager of the year," a fat raise, extended contract, etc. But guess what, he didn't get one single RBI, homerun, stolen base, strikeout, or double play. But he got to take credit for leading his team to success.
This is proof (theoretically) that the world is analog, that is, it's infinitely divisible, in which case there can be no Matrix.
An infinite series goes on an on and on but never reaches its limit (only in engineering) (ala Zeno). We cannot render a perfect curve. We can only represent discrete elements approximating the curve. We approach perfection, but never arrive. You need an infinitely powerful computer to render reality perfectly. Since reality is perfect and not discrete, then we cannot be inside a computer, because a computer cannot be infinitely powerful. Is God a computer? Geez, right back where we started. Drat!
Geez, if that's what yer after, check out San Francisco. It's closer. - Depraved sex industry, and I quote "It will certainly be an education about marketing and social manipulation to the extreme, and an eye opener on dull people's lives and what lengths they go to to make up for it."
Dumb bored humans are not only peculiar to Memphis... or poor backwater regions, if that's what you were implying.
I like the comments that have to do with biking to work. I've lived in St. Louis, Boston, San Francisco, Oakland, San Sebastian (Spain), and San Juan (Puerto Rico), and I've commuted on bicycle in all of these cities. The two worst for traffic and crazy drivers: Boston and San Juan. But even so, it's not that bad. If you bicycle, get yourself some bright clothes, big bags that mount the back (panniers), and act like a car. Obey traffic lights, signal turns etc. Cars will respect you more if you don't act like a scared pedestrian. Own the road! Act like you belong there!
I use a Bruce Gordon rack, and it looks like Robert Beckman's panniers are coming with Bruce's frames. Love them. Been rock solid for almost 8 years now.
These days, I can't really commute to work, but I get up early and get milk, eggs, bread at a local bakery before work. It's a short hilly ride, but it does the trick. Also, if we feel like a movie, I shoot on over to Blockbuster on the bike instead of the car.
There ARE things that you can do throughout your day to just get a little extra exercise. The key is to just make sure you put it in front of yourself so that it happens. If you try to go the gym after work, a lot of times you're tired, have to work late, blah blah blah. Chances are you're going to miss a few workouts a week. Then you're going to feel like crap for not going, which will make you not want to go.
The suggestions that many have made having to do with walking to get lunch at subway, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, etc. are good ones. Just try to find something to get you out of your chair throughout the day.
Oh, one little trick that I use to kill those after dinner munchies... finish with a shot of coffee. It helps close the palate after a meal, and the caffeine knocks out those late night carb cravings. Works for me, YMMV.
They are vampires. Do not invite them in. They have no power if you do not invite them in. Do not respond to them. Do not taunt them. Do not try to be clever.
If they do not have an invitation to enter, they cannot collect evidence. If you do not respond to them, they do not have evidence that you have any software at all. For example, "Our 40 copies of MS Office and XP are licensed." gives them information about your business that they wouldn't otherwise have.
So I repeat, don't talk, write, phone, or otherwise look, sneer, laugh, or taunt them. Just ignore them, their letters, and their demands.
Quietly. And spread this around. You know the funny thing is that all of what I just said was common knowledge more than 5 years ago, but what I'm reading on Slashdot today seems to show me that people are actually responding to these letters. Tsk tsk.
b. 1970 and in the same situation. Graduated from an excellent private university with a degree in Mechanical Engineering (Washington University), wife has two undergraduate degrees, a masters and is finishing her doctorate from Stanford. We founded a Linux based company in Puerto Rico, hired people, fired people. We lost money, acquired debt, but kept up the effort. We are just hanging on at the moment, working hard, but it seems like the economy/climate is a bit immature right now. We are in flux, technologies aren't settling down. I like what IBM is doing with Linux. Sun is starting to get it.
Perhaps in 5 more years I won't have to sound so much like a Jehovah's Witness (have you seen this literature, Linux can save you) going door to door evangelizing about Linux and the benefits of Open Source. It's tough, but things are turning around.
So here we are two highly educated hard working people who BELIEVE in what they do. And you know what THAT could be the difference between us and our parents' generation. From what I see in my peers, the so called Generation X is really fired by passion and belief... perhaps a more spiritually connected generation. We do things for vocation not money.
And yet, we feel left out in much the same way as the a non-popular kid in high school sometimes wishes he/she was part of the in-clique. We lament our lack of savings, smaller earning power, and extra debt... but you know what? We are happier than our parents' generation, less beholden, less trapped in bad marriages, less held down by corporate structure, more racially integrated, more tolerant, more liberated, more accepting. We don't have as much retirement savings as they do, simply because we really LIKE what we do regardless of salary. We aren't working to earn a retirement. We are pursuing work that we find worth our while.
Maybe baby boomers were a product of THEIR parents' generation, that is Depression era. To this day, my grandmother washes and stores her used aluminum foil among other things (war years and depression). That's got to have an effect on people. So, perhaps, shaped by that, GenX's parents overcompensated by saving more, earning more, pursing money as a way to plenty and in the process sacrificed their souls a bit.
So I say to my fellow GenX'ers: Just keep it up. Don't fall apart, stay the course. We'll reap the benefits someday... and if they aren't in the form of money, that's okay.
...Or just think of all the potential presidential candidates that would be disqualified for being nose-pickers.
Worker on phone with headquarters
"We can't support that candidate, sir. He was caught on a Walmart security camera rooting around in his nose."
"No, we couldn't supress it. CNN's already got copies. You think Ford's stumbling was bad... Sir, we're going to have dump him. Inviable candidate. Need to find someone with shorter softer nose hairs and less mucus buildup."
"Yes sir, we'll start looking for a clean nose right away. There's nothing more important in a presidential candidate natually clean nasal passages."
The main problem as I see it with the whole "put video cameras all over public areas" is that we as humans tend to judge the subjects in these recordings by a different standard than we judge ourselves. This is a well studied phenomenon. We do things all the time that when viewed by others are seen as worse than how we see those same acts.
How many times have you heard the words "I can't believe I did that!" or "I don't really do that, do I?" after watching themselves on a video tape.
It's pretty easy to judge others, but we almost never apply the same standards to our own behavior.
You could see the jurors in that child beating in the parking lot vilifying the woman and taking away their child, but going home and smacking their kids around. Not until someone tapes them and confronts them with it, would they realize how bad it looks. But I... I didn't mean... I uh, um, etc.
Did they hit their kids? Yes. Should we as a society start playing self-righteous Church Lady with video tape evidence at all instances?
In my company (Free software based) we get our investors always talking about competition and patenting the living shit out of everything we can get our hands on. They talk about NDA's, closing stuff, hiding stuff, denying access to etc.
My response has been and will always be: "What are you afraid of? Our clear objective is to do it better, keep our lead, solve customers' problems, give good service, and not sit on our asses and collect checks."
Just do it better. There are enough incompetent people in the world. We shouldn't have such a weak view of ourselves that we fear THEM, should we?
Investors don't like to hear that, but then I suppose, it's hard to keep fear from the equation.
If Bitkeeper really wants to be around they should just make sure their product is better than the competition's. If there exists someday a free software alternative that is as good, they they had better make sure they excel in the service area, that they respond quickly and promptly to their clients' needs.
If the free software alternative exceeds their closed source version, then they should switch to it. They could lay off part of their developers, save a bundle, and hire more service folks. They can then happily maintain their extraordinaryily content clients with the high level of support and care to which they have become acustomed.
It's really simple, IMHO. Your fear will end up consuming you until such a time as you end up nothing but an insane reactionary, screaming and hurling insults at your last loyal client.
Man oh, man, if I hear another person say OpenOffice isn't ready for prime time, I swear I'm gonna yank out their odbc and hit them over the head with it.
In my experience joe-generic office drone, when faced with OpenOffice or MS Office, is gonna make all the same mistakes independent of brand.
Try MS Word/Writer:
He's going to double carriage return to put spaces between paragraphs. He's going to indent with spaces. He's going to to use the B I U and font settings to change heading's characteristics (which are double carriage returned as well). He's going to freak out if you mention ODBC and mail merge. He's going to tediously type out envelopes and form letters ("testing" them in the printer to align them correctly). After you teach him how to mail merge off of a DB, or that documents are easier to update when you define styles etc., he will thank you. When you return a few weeks later, he will be back to his same tried and true plodding slow-wittedness.
Powerpoint/Presenter
He's going to make a presentation by first deciding on a background and header style. Then he's going to mess with borders for 30 minutes. Then he's going to play around with slide transitions. Then he's going to import some useless graphics. Eventually he will think about content. Once there, he will repeat steps used to make MS Word document.
Excel/Calc:
Will pour over columns of numbers for hours, hand editing and typing values. He will alt-tab between his spreadsheet and his calculator program to add numbers. He will select some columns and make a chart, spending 15 minutes to find the pie/scatter/bar configuration that looks prettiest, and then proceed to misname the dependent and independent axises. Then he will select fonts, backgrounds, borders... and then spend no less then three hours trying to get his 40x129 monstrosity to fit on ONE page. He will waste no less then 40 sheets of paper to accomplish this. Upon success he will make 56 copies for distribution.
Did I miss anything? I'd say both products let people do their work as they normally do. I've observed for some time and both products give you equal levels of functionality.
This has been my experience for 95% of all office workers, and I also find that their adamance towards MS is inversely proportional to their competence with it.
Man in Black: Truly you have a dizzing intellect. Vizini: Wait 'til I get going. Where was I? Man in Black: Australia. Vizini: Yes, Australia. And everybody knows Australia is entirely peopled by criminals... and criminals are used to people not trusting them as YOU are not trusted by me. Therefore I can clearly not chose the wine in front of you.
That about do it folks? Can't believe nobody posted this already. *shakes head*
Plot is like the picture frame. A frame is something that all pictures need to some degree, but a beautiful frame with a black velvet Elvis painting isn't going into the Louvre any time soon. Conversely, the most beautiful, insightful, imaginative painting in the world isn't going to suffer much in a weak frame. The picture makes the frame, the frame accents the picture.
This is forgotten all too much in all forms of storytelling, most notably movies. Repeat after me. Plot is the picture frame. Take a look at the most recent Star Wars movies. What could be a Tolkien-esque epic tale of the rise and fall of empires, people, relationships, ends up being a b-movie with flat characters, starring the computer generated imagery. The plot is so intricate, so twisted, so melodramatic, and overcompensating of a weak painting that is falls as flat as pastel sailboats hung above the couch.
It's not like the earth is just sitting there waiting for something to hit it. If you detect a collision course, both speeding up the asteroid or slowing it down might mean the difference of several hundred thousand miles. Remember the earth is moving in orbit around the sun, so speeding up the asteroid by just a tad might make all the difference.
Like others have mentioned, what is really needed is to have a earlier forcast of where the things are headed. What's Deep Blue doing these days? Couldn't it see God's chess moves several thousand iterations into the future?
Slashdot Mirror
I agree whole-heartly. I was a company commander of an reserve Army unit that was mobilized recently. I always ask my soldiers about their jobs (basic stuff that I don't know) and it does two things:
1) They see I am interested in what they do
2) I get to see how hard their jobs really are
If you are managing computer programmers/sys admins and they don't get to SEE you appreciate them and their hard work and show them you are interested in how they perform, then you're in for a world of hurt. If it's all about ego and losing face then you are not a good manager. Except in Lord of the Flies, that's just not as big a deal as people think it is. Even in the military, we're learning that "never admitting wrongTM" is NOT a force multiplier.
As an aside, from what I have seen, women managers and officers don't have these ego problem as frequently when dealing with subordinates. I've observed that they are more likely to just say, "show me." The soldier will show them, and then she will know how to do it. Next time it needs to be done, she can appreciate how tough it is, and how competent her people are. She'll be so impressed, in fact, that she'll move heaven and earth to keep distractions/bureaucracy/morons from impeding her soldier's progress. This should be tatooed on the heads of all PHB's.
Why is this so hard to understand? Engineers are failure oriented. We look for ways to break stuff, and then plan to mitigate its breakage. We always look at the worst case scenario. I am an engineer, and I know the words, "Yeah, it won't break" have never passed my lips unless accompanied with several volumes of caveats.
Face it folks, engineers are sky-is-falling-folks. We could stand to filter ourselves a little bit to gain some credibility.
"Yeah, the engineers say something bad is going to happen, but they say that every day. Shall we launch, then? Okay, good to go."
I mean, if you say every single day, the world is going to end, and then one day it actually does, did you, in fact, predict it?
*Falls out of chair laughing... wipes tear from eye*
Have you ever BEEN to Puerto Rico? Geek utopia it ain't, bub.
If the Partido Independentista Puertorriqueno (PIP) gets in power, we're all through down here. Of that much you can be sure... just another Greater Antilles socialist/communist panacea/worker's paradise. You all know how well THAT turned out.
Patton said it best "Good tactics can save even the worst strategy. Bad tactics will destroy even the best strategy."
Business plan = Strategy
Execution = Tactics
The dot com's failed because they were mostly formed out of greed by untalented opportunists with an eye on getting rich.
Scott cares more about creating something real, products, employment, and true technology... something to which we geeks should show a little homage.
So if you are going to start a company, it's not your business plan that's going to save your ass. It's the people with whom you surround yourself, the quality, dedicated, morally straight folks that care about the business and its success.
Besides you're going to throw out your business plan in the first year anyway.
I don't care what everyone else does with their boxes. I know mine are locked up tight. I also know that there is no mystery about how tight they are and how someone would have to get in. I KNOW what's going on. With IIS, you've got to clicky-click-click until you hit the default page and it shows up. After that, it's a big clicky-click-mystery.
These stats don't mean diddly to me, I know my boxes are tight, but all IIS admins can say is, "Well, I've applied all the patches."
Now, back to reading/posting on Slashdot, instead of downloading crap from windowsupdate.
I can just hear the Dell people's frustration at this guy.
"Geez, it's just a simple 'I agree' button. Just click on the damn thing. Why are you so up in arms about it?"
"If it's not such a big deal why the hell did you put it there? I mean, you went through the effort, didn't you? It obviously serves some purpose. Telling me that it doesn't mean anything, and that I should just suck it up and click away, sort of undermines your position doesn't it?"
I get this from time to time on shit that someone wants me to initial or sign. I refuse, and they ask why I am making such a big deal, it doesn't mean ANYTHING. Well then why do you want my signature? Hmmmm?
It's just form over substance, and it erodes civil rights. It makes legal enforcement subjective. Say for example, everybody is expected to sign or click or whatever, leaving any company or law enforcement body to apply the law when and where they see fit, because "everybody's guilty."
In court they can produce the "proof" and ask, "Is this your signature?"
"Well, yes, but I didn't read the agreement."
"Why not?"
"I didn't have it."
"Why did you agree to something you didn't read?"
Say it couldn't happen, I dare you.
Don't need spamassassin for this. If you are using qmail-scanner just set your quarantine-attachments.txt in /var/spool/qmailscan/ like so:
Make sure whitespace between the columns is a tab and not spaces. Then rerun your qmailscanner db update and you're good to go.
Spamassassin is WAY to intelligent to be feeding it filename extensions. This is a lot faster too.
Are there any other extensions that would be good to block?
Given that your life expectancy increases to infinity, you chances of dying unnaturally go to one.
You _will_ die an unnatural death, murder, car crash, or other type of accident.
How's that?
Georgy, you are obviouly cute and young. How does this qualify you to be governor of the 5th largest economy in the world? You say you're intelligent? Okay, I'll grant you that, but you will be working with legislators, judges, and politicians that could be your father. How do you get them to take you seriously?
Bah, do you fire the baseball players when they have a bad season? No, you get yourself a new manager. He'll make some changes that he thinks will increase the chances for team success, just like a president/governor. The guy in charge, his fault or not, has got to take responsibility and move aside. 3 bad seasons in a row? Yer outa there. New guy comes in, doesn't make many personnel changes, and bam, team makes the playoffs. So his players weren't actually crap. It's about leadership style, work environment, and how well he compliments the talents and tempraments of his players. Or sometimes, just dumb luck.
When things are going poorly, the work environment becomes poisoned, so much so that it is nearly impossible to turn around. In cases like California he's (Davis) has just got to take it on the chin and suck it up. Maybe someone'll pick him to be the new head of the RIAA or something.
And when baseball teams do well? Well the managers get the kudos: "manager of the year," a fat raise, extended contract, etc. But guess what, he didn't get one single RBI, homerun, stolen base, strikeout, or double play. But he got to take credit for leading his team to success.
It works both ways.
*rubs eyes in dismay*
I could'a sworn this was Slashdot, not kuro5hin.
Must... not... make... NPR... jokes...
*falls out of chair*
This is proof (theoretically) that the world is analog, that is, it's infinitely divisible, in which case there can be no Matrix.
An infinite series goes on an on and on but never reaches its limit (only in engineering) (ala Zeno). We cannot render a perfect curve. We can only represent discrete elements approximating the curve. We approach perfection, but never arrive. You need an infinitely powerful computer to render reality perfectly. Since reality is perfect and not discrete, then we cannot be inside a computer, because a computer cannot be infinitely powerful. Is God a computer? Geez, right back where we started. Drat!
Geez, if that's what yer after, check out San Francisco. It's closer. - Depraved sex industry, and I quote "It will certainly be an education about marketing and social manipulation to the extreme, and an eye opener on dull people's lives and what lengths they go to to make up for it."
Dumb bored humans are not only peculiar to Memphis... or poor backwater regions, if that's what you were implying.
I like the comments that have to do with biking to work. I've lived in St. Louis, Boston, San Francisco, Oakland, San Sebastian (Spain), and San Juan (Puerto Rico), and I've commuted on bicycle in all of these cities. The two worst for traffic and crazy drivers: Boston and San Juan. But even so, it's not that bad. If you bicycle, get yourself some bright clothes, big bags that mount the back (panniers), and act like a car. Obey traffic lights, signal turns etc. Cars will respect you more if you don't act like a scared pedestrian. Own the road! Act like you belong there!
I use a Bruce Gordon rack, and it looks like Robert Beckman's panniers are coming with Bruce's frames. Love them. Been rock solid for almost 8 years now.
These days, I can't really commute to work, but I get up early and get milk, eggs, bread at a local bakery before work. It's a short hilly ride, but it does the trick. Also, if we feel like a movie, I shoot on over to Blockbuster on the bike instead of the car.
There ARE things that you can do throughout your day to just get a little extra exercise. The key is to just make sure you put it in front of yourself so that it happens. If you try to go the gym after work, a lot of times you're tired, have to work late, blah blah blah. Chances are you're going to miss a few workouts a week. Then you're going to feel like crap for not going, which will make you not want to go.
The suggestions that many have made having to do with walking to get lunch at subway, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, etc. are good ones. Just try to find something to get you out of your chair throughout the day.
Oh, one little trick that I use to kill those after dinner munchies... finish with a shot of coffee. It helps close the palate after a meal, and the caffeine knocks out those late night carb cravings. Works for me, YMMV.
They are vampires. Do not invite them in. They have no power if you do not invite them in. Do not respond to them. Do not taunt them. Do not try to be clever.
If they do not have an invitation to enter, they cannot collect evidence. If you do not respond to them, they do not have evidence that you have any software at all. For example, "Our 40 copies of MS Office and XP are licensed." gives them information about your business that they wouldn't otherwise have.
So I repeat, don't talk, write, phone, or otherwise look, sneer, laugh, or taunt them. Just ignore them, their letters, and their demands.
Quietly. And spread this around. You know the funny thing is that all of what I just said was common knowledge more than 5 years ago, but what I'm reading on Slashdot today seems to show me that people are actually responding to these letters. Tsk tsk.
Maybe you should try
nice -n 19 make && nice -n 19 make install
No responsive problems AND your computer uses all those spare cycles while you are doing other things.
I do this all the time and desktop responsiveness doesn't bog down at all. Kernel doesn't take much longer to compile either.
err mira is either the mandate form "look at that!" of Mirar (to look) or the third person form "he/she looks."
I think you confusing mira for mierda.
Seems everybody is co-oping Spanish words as product names... how long before I can't even speak or write it for fear of copyright violation?
b. 1970 and in the same situation. Graduated from an excellent private university with a degree in Mechanical Engineering (Washington University), wife has two undergraduate degrees, a masters and is finishing her doctorate from Stanford. We founded a Linux based company in Puerto Rico, hired people, fired people. We lost money, acquired debt, but kept up the effort. We are just hanging on at the moment, working hard, but it seems like the economy/climate is a bit immature right now. We are in flux, technologies aren't settling down. I like what IBM is doing with Linux. Sun is starting to get it.
Perhaps in 5 more years I won't have to sound so much like a Jehovah's Witness (have you seen this literature, Linux can save you) going door to door evangelizing about Linux and the benefits of Open Source. It's tough, but things are turning around.
So here we are two highly educated hard working people who BELIEVE in what they do. And you know what THAT could be the difference between us and our parents' generation. From what I see in my peers, the so called Generation X is really fired by passion and belief... perhaps a more spiritually connected generation. We do things for vocation not money.
And yet, we feel left out in much the same way as the a non-popular kid in high school sometimes wishes he/she was part of the in-clique. We lament our lack of savings, smaller earning power, and extra debt... but you know what? We are happier than our parents' generation, less beholden, less trapped in bad marriages, less held down by corporate structure, more racially integrated, more tolerant, more liberated, more accepting. We don't have as much retirement savings as they do, simply because we really LIKE what we do regardless of salary. We aren't working to earn a retirement. We are pursuing work that we find worth our while.
Maybe baby boomers were a product of THEIR parents' generation, that is Depression era. To this day, my grandmother washes and stores her used aluminum foil among other things (war years and depression). That's got to have an effect on people. So, perhaps, shaped by that, GenX's parents overcompensated by saving more, earning more, pursing money as a way to plenty and in the process sacrificed their souls a bit.
So I say to my fellow GenX'ers: Just keep it up. Don't fall apart, stay the course. We'll reap the benefits someday... and if they aren't in the form of money, that's okay.
...Or just think of all the potential presidential candidates that would be disqualified for being nose-pickers.
Worker on phone with headquarters
"We can't support that candidate, sir. He was caught on a Walmart security camera rooting around in his nose."
"No, we couldn't supress it. CNN's already got copies. You think Ford's stumbling was bad... Sir, we're going to have dump him. Inviable candidate. Need to find someone with shorter softer nose hairs and less mucus buildup."
"Yes sir, we'll start looking for a clean nose right away. There's nothing more important in a presidential candidate natually clean nasal passages."
The main problem as I see it with the whole "put video cameras all over public areas" is that we as humans tend to judge the subjects in these recordings by a different standard than we judge ourselves. This is a well studied phenomenon. We do things all the time that when viewed by others are seen as worse than how we see those same acts.
How many times have you heard the words "I can't believe I did that!" or "I don't really do that, do I?" after watching themselves on a video tape.
It's pretty easy to judge others, but we almost never apply the same standards to our own behavior.
You could see the jurors in that child beating in the parking lot vilifying the woman and taking away their child, but going home and smacking their kids around. Not until someone tapes them and confronts them with it, would they realize how bad it looks. But I... I didn't mean... I uh, um, etc.
Did they hit their kids? Yes. Should we as a society start playing self-righteous Church Lady with video tape evidence at all instances?
Emphatically, No!!
In my company (Free software based) we get our investors always talking about competition and patenting the living shit out of everything we can get our hands on. They talk about NDA's, closing stuff, hiding stuff, denying access to etc.
My response has been and will always be: "What are you afraid of? Our clear objective is to do it better, keep our lead, solve customers' problems, give good service, and not sit on our asses and collect checks."
Just do it better. There are enough incompetent people in the world. We shouldn't have such a weak view of ourselves that we fear THEM, should we?
Investors don't like to hear that, but then I suppose, it's hard to keep fear from the equation.
If Bitkeeper really wants to be around they should just make sure their product is better than the competition's. If there exists someday a free software alternative that is as good, they they had better make sure they excel in the service area, that they respond quickly and promptly to their clients' needs.
If the free software alternative exceeds their closed source version, then they should switch to it. They could lay off part of their developers, save a bundle, and hire more service folks. They can then happily maintain their extraordinaryily content clients with the high level of support and care to which they have become acustomed.
It's really simple, IMHO. Your fear will end up consuming you until such a time as you end up nothing but an insane reactionary, screaming and hurling insults at your last loyal client.
Man oh, man, if I hear another person say OpenOffice isn't ready for prime time, I swear I'm gonna yank out their odbc and hit them over the head with it.
In my experience joe-generic office drone, when faced with OpenOffice or MS Office, is gonna make all the same mistakes independent of brand.
Try MS Word/Writer:
He's going to double carriage return to put spaces between paragraphs. He's going to indent with spaces. He's going to to use the B I U and font settings to change heading's characteristics (which are double carriage returned as well). He's going to freak out if you mention ODBC and mail merge. He's going to tediously type out envelopes and form letters ("testing" them in the printer to align them correctly). After you teach him how to mail merge off of a DB, or that documents are easier to update when you define styles etc., he will thank you. When you return a few weeks later, he will be back to his same tried and true plodding slow-wittedness.
Powerpoint/Presenter
He's going to make a presentation by first deciding on a background and header style. Then he's going to mess with borders for 30 minutes. Then he's going to play around with slide transitions. Then he's going to import some useless graphics. Eventually he will think about content. Once there, he will repeat steps used to make MS Word document.
Excel/Calc:
Will pour over columns of numbers for hours, hand editing and typing values. He will alt-tab between his spreadsheet and his calculator program to add numbers. He will select some columns and make a chart, spending 15 minutes to find the pie/scatter/bar configuration that looks prettiest, and then proceed to misname the dependent and independent axises. Then he will select fonts, backgrounds, borders... and then spend no less then three hours trying to get his 40x129 monstrosity to fit on ONE page. He will waste no less then 40 sheets of paper to accomplish this. Upon success he will make 56 copies for distribution.
Did I miss anything? I'd say both products let people do their work as they normally do. I've observed for some time and both products give you equal levels of functionality.
This has been my experience for 95% of all office workers, and I also find that their adamance towards MS is inversely proportional to their competence with it.
Man in Black: Truly you have a dizzing intellect.
Vizini: Wait 'til I get going. Where was I?
Man in Black: Australia.
Vizini: Yes, Australia. And everybody knows Australia is entirely peopled by criminals... and criminals are used to people not trusting them as YOU are not trusted by me. Therefore I can clearly not chose the wine in front of you.
That about do it folks? Can't believe nobody posted this already. *shakes head*
Plot is like the picture frame. A frame is something that all pictures need to some degree, but a beautiful frame with a black velvet Elvis painting isn't going into the Louvre any time soon. Conversely, the most beautiful, insightful, imaginative painting in the world isn't going to suffer much in a weak frame. The picture makes the frame, the frame accents the picture.
This is forgotten all too much in all forms of storytelling, most notably movies. Repeat after me. Plot is the picture frame. Take a look at the most recent Star Wars movies. What could be a Tolkien-esque epic tale of the rise and fall of empires, people, relationships, ends up being a b-movie with flat characters, starring the computer generated imagery. The plot is so intricate, so twisted, so melodramatic, and overcompensating of a weak painting that is falls as flat as pastel sailboats hung above the couch.
It's the characters stupid.
It's not like the earth is just sitting there waiting for something to hit it. If you detect a collision course, both speeding up the asteroid or slowing it down might mean the difference of several hundred thousand miles. Remember the earth is moving in orbit around the sun, so speeding up the asteroid by just a tad might make all the difference.
Like others have mentioned, what is really needed is to have a earlier forcast of where the things are headed. What's Deep Blue doing these days? Couldn't it see God's chess moves several thousand iterations into the future?