tristmegistus

I suggest that playing in person would be a better introduction to D&D than any computer game. The publisher, wizards of the coast, organizes D&D game days at local game stores around the country. They are free and very newby friendly. A key ingredient of D&D for many, myself included, is the time spent around a table with friends. Online interactions don't fully capture this experience.

My goals would guide whether I spent a retainer or not on a publicist. If I needed a reactive, damage-control publicist, then a retainer would make sense to have them at the ready. But if I were planning a product roll-out and wanted media placements it might make more sense to hire someone for a finite campaign.

As far as expectations, for the proactive job I would negotiate goals with the publicist for number and stature of media outlets I wanted coverage from. e.g.(blog coverage, trades, or national TV and newspaper coverage). I would expect them to spend their time understanding the product and then pitching the story to reporters, and then to field press calls and handle logistics (press releases, arranging interviews, etc.)

Expectations for a reactive publicist are not as clear cut. I'd want them to control damage, but I can't think of a concrete metric for that.

In either case, I'd make sure they had news or reporting experience before hiring them. If they don't understand how the media works from the inside, they won't be as effective as someone who does.

Other US gov't agencies use open source. NOAA runs a private sourcforge instance. They also run linux on some of their data processing systems.

My job's web proxy also just started blocking news.ycombinator.com. My guess is the "hacker" news got added to the filter software we use. I plan to appeal the block with IT. The blocking page tells me who to call to do this. I develop software for them, so the site is relevant to my work.

To carry your movie analogy a bit further, video games can be categorized as commerical art as are movies. For games, like motion pictures, the ratio of art to commerce varies for each game. Some are designed to sell tickets/game tokens, while others attempt to tell us something about the human condition.

Good advice. The key step if you want to write is to actually do the writing part. For in-depth, and practical screenwriting advice I really like Terry Rossios's columns on Wordplayer: http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/welcome.html.

I found several effective techniques to get myself working in 'The Now Habit" by Neal Fiore. It focuses more on the psychology and why we procrastinate and provides some useful tools to deal with it.

An example is to schedule time for fun, instead of work. Schedule times to see a movie, see a friend, exercise, or other activities you want to do. The benefit is that when I'm sure I will get the fun things I want, it's easier for me to focus on other tasks in the meantime.

He also describes a 'time boxing' technique that I've found very useful myself. A 30 minute commitment for me does the trick. Usually I'll end up working longer in a stretch and find it easier to recover from interruptions during that 30 minute commitment.

I read it a few years ago when I was a rookie programmer. It gave me a more accurate picture of the job than I had held previously.

I developed C++ software for a launch vehicle. It flew fine. The toughest thing was convincing the old timers to change. They were much more comfortable with assembly a lot more time in their schedules.

I read it. I refer to it occasionally as a field guide to decode the behavior of management, politicians, and other people with power. A few years ago I found some clues in it on how to deal with an evil boss.

The problem of unqualified people responsible for making decision is not limited to software companies.

A misconception that can cause this is the belief that people are interchangeable. Sure, smart people can learn to play almost any role. But, practically, someone learning a role will make more mistakes and take longer than someone who already has some success in that role.

Eacy day it publishes the Wall St. Journal has three page one articles that to a large extent provide in-depth reporting. They spend the time and money to fully report and edit these stories. Reporters I know are jealous of the time WSJ reports can spend developing these stories.

The point I take from this is that the kind of deep reporting papers need to differentiate themselves is not cheap or easy.

The article didn't say how I one can tell narcisists on facebook, but I guess the actual report does. Maybe I can write a facebook app that tells you if a user is a narcisist... What other personality disorders could we screen for?

For the very interested the course website is http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Compute.... It has the videos, lecture notes, problems sets and solutions. I missed the link on Peteris' review.

I've sold software from a small start up to automotive companies. Enterprise sales have longer sales cycles. Plan for 6 mo. to a year to navigate the purchasing system and users at the companies. We used a prototype to get in the door and generate interest. The users and customers at these companies provided valuable feedback for product design. Developing a product that meets the needs of these customers we met was they next key step. Sadly the venture I was involved with failed this step.

As far as them 'stealing' your concept, many large companies do not want to spend their internal capital budget to build tools and would rather focus those resources on their 'core competency.' That means buying commercial tools can make more sense in their budgets than building something on their own. In fact, our product development got a boost from one internal R&D team who lost their budget, and asked us to take the code they had developed and build a product. Then they would buy it from us using their ample remaining tools budget.

It includes SciPy along with many other modules useful to scientific programmers.