Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Eben Upton: Raspberry Pi, its community, and more. (Score 1) 299

1. For the Raspberry Pi, for thinking up the idea, for getting people and companies engaged to make it happen
2. For the community around the R-Pi that formed after the launch, dirven by both Eben and Liz Upton (she deserves credit for the Blog on the R-Pi Foundation website, which has been an inspiration to many)
3. For the metric fuck-ton of creativity that the R-Pi releases. Almost evrybody who plays with it gets a wild idea and goes off and implements it. God only knows what it is that makes that happen, but that flow of white-hot creativity is what drives the whole R-Pi phenomenon.

Comment Witness Statement (Score 1) 415

In my career, I have seen Microsoft try 4 times to get a subscription model for Office working. Failed miserably every time. No-one wants to buy software that locks you into paying forever.

So if Microsoft go down the subscription route for the operating system, they will kill themselves stone cold dead.

Comment Dear Sony, I am delighted! (Score 4, Insightful) 155

Couldn't happen to a "nicer" bunch.

Would I be right to believe the Sony Pictures, being part of the Sony conglomerate, are infected with the same high-handed corporate arrogance that we have seen at Sony Music? "cough" root kit "cough"

I shall be wearing the smile today, all day.

Comment Really Excellent Professional Resources (Score 2) 107

Raspberry Pi Foundation has loads of stuff - see under Resources, Teach and Learn and Make http://www.raspberrypi.org/ - all intended for young people (and its on Creative Commons licences). The "Teach" stuff is written by Carrie-Ann Philbin, who is a professional teacher - she has quite a few videos of good stuff on Youtube.

The Mag-Pi, a magazine free to download (28 issues already) , has tutorials for games in both Scratch and Python, and Minecraft - anfd there's plenty of stuff in there that might fire YOU up! http://www.themagpi.com/

Comment Personal Experience (Score 5, Insightful) 131

Three-and-half years of shift work (interesting, well-paid work for a good employer and decent working conditions) did me physical harm that did not wear off for many years after the experience. I felt listless, short on energy and intitative and thinking power, slightly better while on days, but very bad while on nights. That listlessness was still with me for years afterwards.

During those years, I experienced three different shift patterns. Rotating once a week (day, evening, night) was worst - pretty hellish. Rotating once a month was bearable. I once did 4 months straight on nights - to my surprise, that worked OK (physically). At the end, I was back on weekly rotation and couldn't wait to get out.

Shift work wrecks your social life. Your friends never know where you're at, so they don't include you in their plans, and you don't have the energy yourself to organize anything.

Comment EventBrite (Score 1) 104

Not happy with Eventbrite ticketing process (recent purchase of tickets). EventBrite emailed me some PDFs, and the event asks me to print paper tickets. But the PDF is in US Letter format instead of A4 (which the rest of the world uses). After a lot of fiddling with printer settings, I can print but the printout is one big black block – not enough lettering visible to identify it as a ticket. EventBrite have abused PDF format or just did it badly.
I would definitely DISrecommend Eventbrite to anyone who wants to run a pain-free event.

Comment "Proprietary vendor sets up to screw customers" (Score 1) 240

is this news? No. Surprising? No. How come it was so easy for them to set up? That's the interesting question. Who outside the company itself profited from the health industry's failure to create a single mandated standard? Poliician somewhere blocking the iniatives? What a surprise.

Comment Your sales people are cr*p... (Score 2) 159

..if they cannot sell in an atmosphere in which you are a trusted, open, and reliable partner. That is the most powerful position from which to sell.

Your problem here is lazy salesmen who don't want to be bothered dealing with the phoney issues the competition bring up - they just want an easy sell, or they are undertrained and scared salesmen who are afraid they don't know how to counter the phoney arguments....EVERY such issue is a selling point on trust that differentiates your company and your product from the competition. Your company is straight - the competition aren't, because they keep the truth hidden.

Can the sales people really prove that the openness is the reason why they can't win the sales? I doubt it very much - salesmen don't do numbers, don't do proof, it's all hearsay and presenting single anecdotes as universal truth.

And I say this because I was trained by the best, worked with the best, and sold software successfully when everything we sold was 15-20% more expensive that the competition - and we succeeded because we were trusted.

Your Plan B, if you can't get the bosses to back you: close Bugzilla to the public, open it to third-party and developers and (KEY IDEA) to the relevant IT staff at customers. You sales people MUST MUST MUST use the customer IT staff as recommenders - if they aren't, they are NOT doing their job properly.

Comment Looking at the past... (Score 4, Insightful) 145

...like a dinosaur in the last days before the meteor. The future is over there in the Makerspaces, where 3D printing, embedded stuff, robotics, CNC machines, homebrew PCBs at dirt-cheap prices are happening. It's all growing like weeds, crosses the boundaries between all disciplines includg art, and is an essential precursor to the next Industrial Revolution, in which you and your giant installations will be completely bypassed.

You, sir, are a buggy-whip manufacturer (as well as a dinosaur).

Slashdot Top Deals

Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky

Working...