fotbr

Well, I'm in the 4th group, then.

My current job, and every previous development job has clauses about outside development, and what internal hoops have to be jumped through. I'm compensated for that restriction, so I don't mind.

Even lacking those restrictions, contributing to open source projects just isn't really my thing, and my personal projects are just that -- personal, and are usually ugly, hacked together in a hurry and never revisited solutions to specific problems, not resume filler.

If you can't find some way to determine if I'm a good fit without looking at github, having me do unpaid work, or playing trivia games, you need to revise your hiring policies.

Why have we, as a group, allowed the creation of this requirement, official or otherwise, that we have a public portfolio of work we've done on our own time?

Looks like it's $6.99 per delivery, not necessarily per package. Perhaps they can accept & store packages for a couple days, if you know you've got a string of them coming, and can wait until they're all at the luna wearhouse?

It's just a small, local signmaking business. No web presence; currently relying on word of mouth to keep the workload low enough that I can still meet expectations -- quality and deadlines -- while working out of my garage and working my software development job full-time. I'm also, slowly, getting into wooden canoe & kayak building; if I can successfully turn that into a profitable product line, I'll be thrilled.

Article is from the British Broadcasting Company, about a British company testing the product at an airfield in Worcestershire, England. Me throwing "rozzers" in was simply a bit of humour.

As for the last: 1) Defending against such a system is not as simple as adding "mesh enclosures" 2) Defenses are not cheap, and won't be added to "police and all other emergency vehicles" for the simple reason that it's too expensive to do so. 3) Unless you're in an OJ style "chase" where there's nothing behind you except police cars, there's plenty of other vehicles that can be disabled, causing havoc that the police would (also) have to deal with.

Note: I'm not actually advocating using such a device to get away from the police. I do, however, think it is an eventuality, and when it happens, I will find it amusing, in the same way that I find just about any instance of people directly thumbing their noses at authority amusing.

Yet another reason to buy old cars. Screw "black box" recorders and the current congress-think towards mandated gps tracking.

On the other hand, having worked on a similar setup while at university, these are not particularly difficult to build. Mounting one in the boot of said old car would make for a wonderful time when the rozzers come calling.

I fall into this "Dark Matter Developer" in more than one way.

On the social front: I go to, on average, one half of one work-related conference per year (real world, I go to one conference every other year). I have no use for twitter, facebook, linkedin, or any other "social network", preferring instead old-school forums and the occasional aggregator like HN where the signal-to-noise ratio is quite a bit better. I have a personal blog, updated every few months, that rarely touches on anything tech related, and is read primarily by friends.

On the tech front: I write code, in part, for decade+ old systems, and the rest with old-fashioned, plain-jane java. I write code that will never be used anywhere else, in languages that are neither new, "cool", or "hip" in any way. I keep somewhat up-to-date with big-picture new tech, but I see no reason to delve into any details if it doesn't relate to my work. I enjoy what I do, and the problem solving that goes into it.

I have, perhaps, fallen out of love with the field, and the industry. Perhaps I never had a passion for writing code, preferring instead the theoretical challenges I found while pursuing my degree in computer science.

What I do have: A life away from work, and away from computing. I'm in the middle of a multi-year "bootstrapping" of my own "start-up" -- one that has absolutely nothing to do with computing, and instead has everything to do with my love of woodworking. It should, with effort, provide a secondary source of income for as long as I wish. If I'm extraordinarily lucky, I may be able to make it my primary source of income at some point. There will be no VCs, no big-payout exit. Yet I consider myself just as much of an entrepreneur as any of the silicon valley crowd -- simply one with different goals and a different market in mind.

"Sorry, we are currently experiencing heavy load. Please check back later."

Thanks, but I prefer my IDE to be available anytime I want it. Even if this IDE-in-a-browser isn't tied to their website, it doesn't inspire confidence that they can't handle a surge in web traffic.

Screw 'em. A London based company is under no obligations to kowtow to the PR wishes of the whitehouse, or the president's pet organization.

For the stuff you don't want the post office to touch / screw up / fail to deliver / whatever -- pay the $4 / item prime rate for one day delivery. No post office involved then.

My only complaint with amazon using usps for the last-mile delivery (fedex smart-post, whatever ups's equivalent is) is that being just outside a good-sized city, fedex/ups will get it to their facility in a day or two, and then the post office will take another full week to move the package 5 miles.

> That being said, if I had a magic formula for instant huge wealth you can be damn sure I wouldn't be sharing it.

But I'd be selling it, and you can find out how by buying my book for the low, limited time price of three payments of $99.99. If you act now, we'll also throw in this great place-mat shaped like a $3 bill, and a ring-tone for your phone that sounds like money. Just pay separate shipping and handling. <insert three thousand word disclaimer here>

Seems like the short version is "apply principles of 'Moneyball' to American fantasy football, and win".

American football still holds no interest to me, and I'm still the guy at the office who would rather discuss F1, rugby, and proper football with Brits and Aussies in the building.

As an aside - if anyone has a good "cricket for dummies" recommendation, I'm open to suggestions. As much as I try, the rules still don't really make sense to me. Perhaps I'm permanently damaged having grown up on baseball.

Crumble the workforce? HAH

Here's the bitch of the situation, and the part that most who think like you do not understand -- the people that you're hoping will "come to their senses", if they take the oaths they signed seriously (and they signed oaths, the breaking of which are punishible by imprisonment) -- are not allowed to possess (ie, read, since that would involve having a copy of the document on the device being used to read it, even if only temporarily) the documents driving "this big PR outrage", because even though those documents are out in public, they are not automatically declassified.

People (in general) don't like OTHER people doing that. They assume that the person going solo is lonely, sad, and is generally someone to be pitied, mocked, or both. The stigma is not attached by the people going solo, it's attached by everyone else.

Given the spat of hard disk failures I've experienced in the last few months, I actually trust the paper copy to remain useable longer. Also, the lower data density of a paper note book helps mitigate the risk as well - damage to a notebook simply doesn't affect the quantity of data that the loss of a hard disk, tablet, or flash drive can affect.

My (paper) note book (a cheap $0.50 mead spiral bound model) can be thrown in my bag without any concern over it being damaged, or remembering to charge it, and it will remain functional. It has no obvious value to thieves, and leaving it lay visible in the car does not appreciably increase my risk of the car being broken into. It is also lighter, and quicker to use than any tablet I've used.

>I have no idea why they didn't go with the accepted abbreviation of November as 'Nov'.

Perhaps because they're talking about October?

That would be an interesting service to provide. More data points for companies (x people were interested enough to check reviews with us) and end-consumers get a better feeling for the reviews. I'm not sure how you'd turn a profit with it, unless the data points for companies prove valuable enough. I also don't know how you'd keep from turning such a service into yet another system to be gamed.

Just out of curiosity, do those "reputation management" companies realize that in serving their clients by making fake reviews, they help destroy end-consumer trust?

In many ways, it's the old SEO argument all over again - gaming a system to increase ratings eventually erodes trust in that system, making those increased ratings less valuable. At the same time, refusing to game the system means your business loses potential eyeballs/customers/etc, so one is left with the old rock vs hard place situation.

This one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziOG_GHNVq0

After the IBM commercial, "Ideating" became code for "I'm going to take a nap" where I worked at the time.

>An actual bomb is beyond the capability of anybody but a nation-state.

No, no it isn't. The theory is well known. More importantly, the theory has been been put into practice before, and the practice is pretty well known too. Actually making the parts would be relatively easy. The hard part, as usual, is getting one's hands on the fissile material.

In a study* from either the late 40s or early 50s, the US put a handful of "normal" physicists (ie, not exceptionally brilliant) in a room without access to any classified nuclear research, and told them to design a bomb based only on what information was publicly available. Their design was handed to the people actually designing and building atomic bombs for evaluation. The result? The design was a viable a-bomb, not the most efficient, but it would have worked.

*I don't have details handy, but the guy who wrote "Dark Sun" covered it in either "Dark Sun" or his first book.

What happens when the people you're trying to shame simply do not care about your opinion, or the opinions of anyone else?

Strangely enough, "new version of blahblahblah" is much more interesting to me than anything "tech culture" ever will be.

In reply to your reply:

Different, perhaps, but not necessarily better, or necessarily worse. What I'm saying is that the differences are so minor as to not matter in the long run. The figurehead at the top matters, yes, but not nearly as much as people think - the bulk of the power resides in congress, which is one of the reasons that nothing really changes when the presidency changes clothes and puts on the (R) robes or the (D) robes.

I'll freely admit that my cynicism and pessimism get in the way at times. On the other hand, I'm right about the actions of the government far more than I'm wrong.

I've been around long enough to see multiple administrations from both parties. I get the impression that you were not politically active prior to gwb, or if you were, it was not long beforehand -- if that is incorrect, I apologize. If I'm correct, then feel free to write me off as a lost-cause, a bitter old man, etc. because to you, that's what I am. Either way, cherish that idealism, for when it's gone, you can't get it back.

It was a snarky dismissal, yes, but I think it points out something quite valuable that a lot of people overlook -- Obama's election message was that voting matters, that it effects change, and that he was different, etc. He has utterly and completely failed to live up to that message. Which is fine, he was a politician trying to get elected and that's the way the system works -- anyone who honestly believes ANYTHING a politician says during a campaign (or any other time, for that matter) needs their head examined.

Technical means can be a solution, but it falls back to the way encrypted communications have traditionally been done: I encrypt it locally, send only the encrypted copy (ideally destroying the "plain-text" copy), and use a key (or set of keys, depending on the encryption scheme chosen) that only the recipient has possession of. This involves work; exchanging keys, etc. Any steps or solutions to make things easier necessarily involve trusting third parties, which increases the possibility of that trust, and therefore your message security, being betrayed.

As for the hearts and minds issue - I don't believe the trite saying: "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear". I am, however, extremely cynical and pessimistic. So while I don't think the current trend towards a surveillance state is good at all, I do think the system is too far gone to successfully change it. The saying "power corrupts" has more truth to it than anyone really wants to admit. Bureaucracies do not like to reduce their size, or their power. Making that happen is, sadly, more likely than not going to require force and bloodshed - a path I'd rather not have this country go down.

I realize this type of thinking doesn't really help, as it offers no solutions for actual change, but that's the reason why I'm not "all that bothered" by any of the recent revelations - it's less a matter of being "bothered" and more a matter of being resigned to the reality that the average person; or even a majority of them, cannot make real change happen in a peaceful way anymore - the best we can hope for is to put a new coat of paint on while the structure keeps rotting.

If your communications are vulnerable, and your communications are of interest to governments, then there's very little you can do to avoid it being intercepted.

You may, if you trust your hardware, your encryption software, and your key management, be able to keep that intercepted message from being read for some length of time. That is different than actually intercepting the traffic, which is trivial for the organizations we're talking about, and there is very, very little someone can do to avoid the interception.

Believing that being on a different continent makes you safe is deluding yourself.

If the US decides your France<->Iceland traffic is that valuable, it's a small matter to reach an arrangement with friendly-or-easily-pressured governments, agencies, or companies to have your traffic routed in such a way that the US can see it, whether that's in the US or not, or to just have one of those governments, agencies, or companies to play MITM and pass everything over wholesale.

For that matter, go look up Ivy Bells. Sure, fiber can't be tapped in the same manner, but you can get around that by placing your splice/tap during other outages, especially if you arrange for those too -- "Here's <insert amount> dollars/euros/ducats/doubloons/etc. Drag this across the bottom from point x to point y on your charts on date z, then cut it loose and leave it behind and go on your way."

Now, with a straight face, can you claim that you know, for sure, that your undersea links are pristine and unmolested, either at the end points with the equivalent of the infamous at&t "nsa rooms", or somewhere in the middle? Do you know, for sure, that the people who own the fiber trunks aren't playing ball with the nsa/mi6/dgse/etc?

Unless you own the entire infrastructure, and actively monitor it to be sure of such things, it is best to assume that your communications are vulnerable at some point along the way.

Others (and you) note battery drain when the gps circuits are used, why does it make "zero sense" that current draw is higher when the camera is powered on, vs when it's off?

To answer your question though, yes, I have experimented several times over the nearly three years I've owned the phone (plain old iPhone 4 from sept 2010). From a full charge, airplane mode on (turn off the RF drain and minimize outside events -- namely texts and phone calls that I cannot control), phone set to sleep after 1 minute, screen brightness minimum, and with nothing else running, I can start the camera app (pre-configured to be in still photo mode, with flash set to "off"), hit the home button to drop the camera app to the "background", start and then quit the notes app to make sure the last thing I did was something other than the camera app, and doing nothing else with the phone -- lay it on the coffee table and literally do not touch it -- will drain the battery in about 3 hours, 4 max. Doing the same routine, but quitting the camera app, then starting and quitting the notes app and I can leave the phone on the coffee table for days (although I usually give up after about three and start using the phone again).

Everything else I can (and do) leave running with no ill effect.

Bug in the OS? Bug in the built in camera app? Something defective in my battery/phone? Perhaps -- I don't know, and don't really care. I just make a point to turn the camera app off when I'm done with it. Since I usually have a DSLR with me, I rarely reach for my phone for photos in the first place, so it simply isn't that big of an issue.

It's not always about memory. With my (current iOS, but not current hardware) iPhone, it's about battery life - for whatever reason, applications that use the camera dramatically drop battery power even if the app isn't "active".

It shouldn't be that way, but it is, and the only way I have to control it is to go manually quit certain applications when I'm done with them.

I've done the first, and get good results with aluminum, brass, and both mild and stainless steel (although stainless is probably pushing the limit here). Your anecdote + my anecdote don't equal data, but your use of absolutes -- specifically "the only way" is incorrect. It can be done, and many have done exactly that.

Also, your magic $10k price-point mill doesn't include the cost of tooling, or workholding, or CAD/CAM software, etc. So now you're just reaching for anything to inflate the cost back up to your number.