1) If you want to be understood. Can you imagine a judge issuing a decision in a case with bad grammar? It only inspires hundreds of unnecessary future cases, to litigate "what the judge really meant." Grammar represents the social rules of how literate people communicate. And, intentional violation of grammatical rules is the stuff of art: You represent the school teacher in a novel by giving their lines grammatical correctness; you represent the village idiot with the LACK of good grammar. Legal documents, professional publications, technical manuals are all most productive of positive outcomes when writter within the accepted grammatical rules of the language. See "Strunk & White." (And, yes, grammar changes over time, which is why so many people fail to appreciate Shakespeare in the original.) 2) If you want to be perceived as credible. Ah kin skribble to mah kin, but do you think those are the words of someone you'd trust to invest in? Business plans, project proposals, provocative ideas, scientific papers are rejected by readers if the authors' text is ungrammatical, because they project the writer's image as one with little reasoning power (with Mark Twain and WIll Rogers as credible exceptions, because of the obvious intentionality behind the text), and therefore render the entire text as unreliable. Imagine where Higgs' Boson would be if Einstein had--despite writing in other than his native tongue--written in poor grammatical form, Would it even have a name? So, argue against rules of grammar all you want, make fun of the grammatically accomplished...and live your life impoverished in the process. --Carol Anne

Ah, another vote for fluid, situational ethics. That'll get you lots of moral support from the criminal community!

What are you trying to do, make a living or change the world? (You generally can't do both at once; if you get rich from work, you can THEN maybe change the world.)

Let's start with the basics: What's in it for YOU? Is open source a buzzword, something you think you have to do ethically, just don't have the chops to turn it into a business, it based on other open source code? Is income something you vitally need to continue your work, to live a better life, or are you independently wealthy (I think you've ruled out the latter)?

I agree with an earlier poster: Make the core code that delivers basic utility to the user open source, if you want to use it as your "loss leader" to show them what's possible. Include all the extra features in the menus or configuration options of your program, so users can see what they're missing (clicking on it opens a window telling them it's in the commercial product, if they'd just buy it).

But, remember, open source is just a way for other people to leverage your code and make it into a competitive product...some will even violate your license agreement, and modify it to suit their customer base. Do you really want to spawn your own competitors?

An interview that just plows the same old ground is worthless; if it yields new insights that others can glean, it could be priceless.

I'm betting it's the former.

...because I use Lotus Domino/Notes. Creating new databases with specialized forms and views takes, oh, maybe an hour. As owner/operator of two business, one new start-up, plus sitting on both public and private boards of directors, I never thought I'd be this busy. But, I know exactly what I have to do every day with the built-in calendar and eMail. When I send an eMail, it's logged, so I can find it (and the responses).

As one example: I keep a Technology database of hard-won knowledge and acquired information about fixing computers (my own, private Knowledgebase). When (as just the other day) I discover a new solution (the nasty uses by malware authors of the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options registry key, and how to clean it out), I document it, so I have the solution on my notebook wherever I go. When I find new information and add it to the database in the field, it's immediately copied back to the server for others to use when I return to the office.).

I expect many of you to issue the usual gripes and outrageous claims about Lotus Domino/Notes, but unless you really build apps for it in a hour, you don't even understand the power of the product. I've been using it since 1992, and it's STILL the primary tool on every computer in my company.

Sure, you'll save a few bucks...for a few months. Then, things will start failing. You'll find there're no hardware drivers for many of the parts inside, and when people start finding mechanical parts, like pushbuttons, sockets and controls, falling off, you'll discover that the caseworks maker doesn't sell spare parts. Also, as mentioned above, you'll have to pay for Windows licenses (unless you're moving to Ubuntu, too). I've got lots of happy clients, because I keep replacing the crap they have (e.g., the computer with a touch-screen display that overheats every Summer day afternoon) with brand-name products. They pay me my comparatively higher prices (considering the local dolts who call themselves my "competition") because I deliver stable, reliable systems that they never have to worry about (until, like yesterday, a UPS went up in smoke...quick to fix that one). Stick with reputable makers. Avoid the small storefronts that will "build yours" and put in everything cheap, but charge you somewhat less than brand-name products. Heck, I've only been in this computer business for over half-a-century, so my experience probably will be punished by others with a more "home-brew" bent...but you said it's a business, not a bunch of students. You should take a good look at whether, over the entire life (which will inevitably be more than 18 months!), you'll have made a good bargain. I'd wager that "white box clones" will end up saving you nothing.

Quickbooks now allows you to download transactions, semi-automatically (you have to go through them and edit them, in some cases, so you know what was the transaction was for. Then, export the data from Quickbooks for further analysis. Ever since Quickbooks added the "download transactions" functionality, my bank accounts are NEVER out of balance in my records, monthly reconciliation typically takes me 3-5 minutes/month/account, and (because I use "Memo" fields extensively), I can always search for a particular transaction.

I recommend everyone have three passwords, for situations that demand High, Medium and Low security. Your bank and credit card accounts, and places where you have to supply a bank or credit card number (e.g., a site where you purchase stuff) deserve High security. Places on the Internet where your identity is at stake (e.g., do you want a criminal sending eMails from your account?) deserve Medium security. And, finally, you need a "throwaway," Low security passwords for those situations where you are required to provide a password, but you don't sense a security need (e.g., a password required to read a newspaper online; do you really care if someone else uses your password to read that same news?). But, mind you, three is not a magic number. If you have need for four security levels, by all means, select four...or more. Or, if you have different passwords for your business and your family matters, set up two sets of passwords (say, three for the office, and four for home).

Now I'd like to show you a way to create a High security password that's easy to remember, in xx easy steps:

1) Pick a word that connects with you, one that isn't particularly obvious. It might be a term of art in a hobby (not "woodworking" but, perhaps, "dovetail," not "stamps" but "philatelist."). Make it a longer word if you have more concerns about security. You can use very longs words, like "antidisestablishmentarianism," but make sure you can easily remember it (for purposes of illustration, I've picked "philatelist").

2) Pick a short string of digits, but don't use your age, your home address, or some part of your Social Security number, or other common information other people already know about you. And never use your bank account number as a password! I like to pick a word (say, that word you use to refer to some silly event in your past that still produces a smile), tap it out on the telephone touchpad, and write down those digits. Now there's a number that's hard to guess! Or, pick the month and day of an important date (but avoid those dates easy to learn or guess, like your birthday). Let's use "3981" for our example.

3) Now, take the word you picked, and break it into two parts (most people like to split on syllable boundaries, but you can pick, say, the first six letters, leaving all the rest. Write down the two parts on a piece of paper, separated by some space (you'd see "phila", some space, and then "telist").

4) Now, insert the digits you created in step #2 in the space between the two parts; you get "phila3981telist".

5) Finally, capitalize some of the letters. Capitalizing the first letter of each of the two parts is fairly obvious; maybe you'd like to make it a bit more complex and captialize the second letter in each string, ending up with "pHila3981tElist."
That makes your password easier to remember (it's a word and string of digits you know, with your own personal preference on positioning of the parts and the capitalization).

From this you can easily use use the first two-thirds or the last two-thirds for your Medium-security password (e.g., "pHila3981" or "3981tElist"; just pick one, and remember that).

Finally, for a throw-away password, just pick some easy part of your Medium-security password (e.g., "3981t"; notice I included one of the letters, too; some websites refuse all-digit passwords).

Within a couple of days, you'll have easily remembered three different passwords, none of which are easy to guess. And, you won't have to keep them written down, anywhere (however, I always recommend you write them down and store them in a safe, or a bank deposit drawer, in case you're incapacitated and somebody needs to legitimately act like you to pay the mortgage, etc.)

I hope this helps someone else, too.

--Carol Anne (Copyright 2009, Carol Anne Ogdin)

Okay, so my 53 years trumps your 15. The issue is that by installing Chrome in profile directories, you've left it completely read/write-capable. That means some malware can simply change the executable at boot time to what ever they'd prefer to put in place, and there's no protection. When it's in the %ProgramFiles% structure, however, I can set the permissions (like Windows 7 does, by default, with the "TrustedInstaller" service, or like most of us who care about security do with prohibiting writing to executables by imposing an Administrator's permissions as the only "Write" authority.) Generally, things in the %ProgramFiles% structure should be--under proper security--virtually invulnerable to malware attempting to corrupt software, while data, largely in the "Profiles", can be read and written freely. Perhaps that's not a security vulnerability in your world, but it certainly is in mine.

...when it installs itself, in Windows, at %Userprofile%\Application Data\Google Chrome? That is just amateur programming, and is a real beast if you're in an Active Directory environment with Roaming Profiles, 'cause the damn software keeps getting copied to/from the server with ever logon/logoff. I understand Google might consider compliance with separation of programs from their data might be "difficult," but the ease with which any malmare can corrupt Chrome because of it's lack of installation security make Chrome a pariah in our environment, and I've banned it from all our and client computers!

I disagree. We all make mistakes...even huge companies. But, it's what they do AFTER they make a biggie that marks those the consumer can have confidence in, or not. Gateway had failures, but never tried to improve their practices, so they're still an "also ran." IBM decided it was smarter to get out of the business that didn't fit their management model, post-Gerstner. HP I've written about before in this thread. Dell has won my confidence, and they've not (to my knowledge) ever lied to me. They deserve my caution during the recovery, but they seem to be doing well at it, so I'm likely to say a "Dell-preferred" professional.

Amen. I've bought 'em all since 1980, one vendor or another, and Dell is STILL my preferred choice. I agree: This story is WA-A-AY old, and the problems of the Dell Latitude D6xx series is another old one that still gets flogged by lazy journalists. Remember, Michael Dell stepped down as CEO (in favor of Rollins) in March, 2004. From that date, Dell deteriorated: Support was outsourced to India, Purchasing bought cheap crap from mainland China, and Development was cut back to the bare bone. A deteriorating Dell reputation was the result, and Michael Dell stepped back into the CEO role in January, 2007, to arrest the slide. It's taken him a long time, but Customer Service still is VASTLY better than HP or Lenovo or Gateway, they offer Next Day On-Site Repair, and they stand by the extended warranties they had to issue after the crap Rollins bought started failing in customer sites. I still rate Dell as better than 94% on a scale of Perfect, with the nearest competitor below 85%. HP, for instance, has taken the same route: They hired Carly Fiorina who trashed the place (e.g., killing the Customer Service Operation, recognized as World Class by the industry), corrupted the brand with Compaq, laid off everybody competent. They then brought in "seat warmer" Mark Hurd, who is barely holding on by his fingernails...and there is STILL no decent Customer Support or Product Quality improvement on the horizon; they're just chasing the Stock Price (mostly with over-priced printer supplies), as that's how Senior Executives get rich. I'll stick with Dell. This story is bad, but it's ancient history, and there's nobody on the horizon who's likely to ever do any better.

I know, that's too much to ask of modern code monkeys. How many of you who "good enough" quality have ever even read a book on "Software Engineering?" Have you even HEARD of the original NATO conference on that subject? How many have studied interesting "Software Physics." Yes, all code I write has bugs, because I am not omniscient. There are inputs and environments I never imagined the program having to cope with. But about half the code I write has two things rarely seen in code today: 1. Comments in the form of Assertions (e.g. "At this point, input XYZ is confirmed to be in the range 87...92". 2. About half the lines of actual code (absent comments) are validation of input conditions from the world (user and environment) outside the program itself. Perfection is not actually achievable, but IT'S THE ONLY TARGET WORTH PURSUING. Companies like Microsoft don't even try, because they're not in the software business; they're in the money-making business. Professionals care; money-grubbers aren't.

You might be surprised that the Uniform Commercial Code often trumps local law in the courts. As I said, earlier, get an attorney if you're really concerned about ownership. And, documentation is key: If you don't have a written contract BEFORE you start the project, while everybody is still friendly, expect to be surprised by the other party with unscrupulous tendancies.

There's a practical presumption in law that if you pay for something and it is delivered, you own it. You have to have it in writing if you don't want to work that way. That, for instance, is why we have those obnoxious (and legally tenouous) "shrink-wrap" licenses. Because "licensing" is not the same as "owning." If licensing were the normal case in common law, you wouldn't need a "licensing" agreement.